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Police detective Huang Huo-tu, a Waisheng ren (Mainland Chinese) in Taiwan, has relegated himself to a mundane job as a Foreign Affairs Officer as self-punishment for blowing the whistle on corruption in the force, and his colleagues have turned their backs on him. His young daughter is left traumatized after being taken hostage in a gun battle, and his wife Ching-fang is filing for divorce. Huang is on the verge of a severe nervous breakdown. A series of bizarre deaths in Taipei baffle local investigators, including a Catholic priest of foreign nationality found disemboweled. The priest is involved in the Taiwan-US military trade, so FBI agent Kevin Richter is called in to help. Huang, who can speak English, is made his liaison. Kevin, the topmost serial killer expert in the field, was previously investigating a series of murders in US in which all victims appeared willing to die. The crime scenes imply the involvement of supernatural forces. In one case a businessman froze to death in his office in the middle of a heatwave; in another the mistress of a prominent official called the fire department and was later found burned to death - with no sign of a fire ever occurring in her apartment. Richter is skeptical but Huang, who is more receptive to supernatural possibilities, suggests they investigate a local cult. After consulting a scholar in Academia Sinica, Huang and Kevin find that the killings follow a Taoist belief that one must fulfill five forms of suffering required to become a Xian, an immortal being. According to legends, the one who can perform the five rituals is born with double pupils in one eye. They also find that all victims have done something against their conscience, and that a kind of fungus was used to induce hallucination, pleasure and guilt which made the victims kill themselves. An advanced technology was used to spread the fungus, and the Police trace this technology to two bosses of an electronics company in Hsinchu Science Park. The men has spent their fortune and technology to move a Taoist temple into their company, where many cult believers gather. The police enter the temple, but the cultists perform a ritualistic massacre, killing many officers and cultists alike. After the massacre Kevin and Huang find a seemingly innocent girl who survived, and the case is closed. The next day Huang finds Kevin dead, having pulled out his own tongue, which is the fifth suffering required. Huang finds that both he and Kevin were infected with the fungus by the girl. Huang begins to hallucinate, tormented by the guilt he feels for his wife and daughter, and returns to the temple to confront the girl survivor, who is revealed to be the cult's leader. The girl has the double double pupil in her eye and believes that by having Huang kill her, she can complete the fifth requirement and become immortal. Huang kills the girl and is nearly overwhelmed with hallucination and guilt, but in the end he is allowed to return to his wife and child. The film ends with a Buddhist Gatha, which in the late and DVD version is "因愛生憂,因愛生懼,若遠離愛者,無憂亦無懼。"(In Mainland China versions 懼 becomes 怯) but in earlier versions is "love is immortal" (有愛不死) 

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The story follows Elías Contreras, a Zapatista investigation commission, and Héctor Belascorán, a private detective from Mexico City and recurring character of Taibo's, as they try to unravel the mystery of a dead man leaving messages on answering phones, find out who Morales is. Belascorán is Taibo's main protagonist; Contreras is Marcos's. During the book, and especially during the chapters written by Marcos, the reader is introduced to many characters, some of whom only appear for a very short time. The book looks at the politics of Mexico and at neo- liberalism. 

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The Romans having been humiliated many times by the rebel Gauls, Felonius Caucus, advisor to Centurion Nebulus Nimbus, suggests a single combat between Vitalstatistix, chief of Asterix's tribe, and the Gallo-Roman Chief, Cassius Ceramix of Linoleum. According to ancient Gaulish customs, the loser would forfeit his entire tribe to the winner. When Ceramix argues that Vitalstatistix would surely win with Getafix's magic potion of invincibility, Caucus sends a patrol to capture Getafix before the challenge is confirmed. Whilst attempting to scatter the attackers, Obelix accidentally strikes Getafix with a menhir, the impact of which causes amnesia and insanity. Following Cassius Ceramix's challenge, Asterix and Vitalstatistix attempt to restore Getafix's mind by experimenting in potions; but this produces only a whimsical sub-plot, in which the Roman soldier Infirmofpurpus, captured by Obelix as a test subject, is temporarily rendered weightless. Thereafter Asterix and Obelix consult Psychoanalytix (original French name is Amnesix), a druid who specializes in mental disorders; but when asked to demonstrate what caused the problem, Obelix crushes Psychoanalytix with a menhir, leaving him "in the same state as Getafix". As the two crazed druids concoct a number of skin-coloring potions, Asterix tries to get Vitalstatistix into good physical shape for the fight, mainly by jogging. Meanwhile, the Romans plan to arrest Ceramix after the fight, lest he thereafter challenge their control of Gaul. As the fight begins, Getafix accidentally makes a potion which restores his mind, and retains sanity despite being hit by another menhir (thrown by Obelix in an attempt to cure Getafix by repeating the cause of the original accident). Getafix quickly proceeds to brew a supply of magic potion. Meanwhile, the fight has turned into a bore: Vitalstatistix, exploiting his superior physical condition, is running circles around the ring while Ceramix tries in vain to catch him. After hearing of Getafix's recovery, Vitalstatistix defeats his exhausted opponent with a single blow. The Romans do not accept this victory, but are crushed by the Gauls, who had drunk Getafix's magic potion. When Ceramix is reduced to amnesia by a third menhir that was thrown by Obelix during the battle, Vitalstatistix declines his right to take over Ceramix's tribe, and sends him home in honour. Psychoanalytix returns to business despite his amnesia, but remains professionally successful despite "side effects" of his medicines. Ceramix, now in the same mental state as Psychoanalytix, becomes "the most courteous chief in Gaul" and the probable originator of French courtesy. His tribe returns to Gaulish ways and the fight against Rome, while Vitalstatistix's tribe celebrate their victories. 

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Ed and Alice are in love, but not passionate, ripping-clothes-off in love. They do laundry on Saturday, and do small things that make each other happy. At their engagement party, Alice sees a friend hook up with a server and comes to the conclusion that she would like to try more sexual partners before she settles down for the rest of her life. Ed, initially resistant to the idea of seeing other people, decides to go along with it. Alice takes the lead by making out with a friend's contractor, Donald. When she tells Ed, he is shocked, but incredibly turned on. They have some of the best sex they have had in years. Ed attempts to have sex with an actress at work, but cannot perform. Alice finally psyches herself up to having sex with Donald at his house. She leaves satisfied but hurriedly, while Donald clearly has fallen for her. That night, Alice tells Ed that she had sex with Donald. Ed never thought she would actually go that far. Upset, he leaves. He tries to hook up with different girls at a house party with his friend Carl, but none of his attempts goes well. He returns home to find Alice trying to call off the whole deal. Ed tells her that she is right and that he overreacted, but he says that they should continue the deal until she is completely satisfied so they have no regrets. The next day, Ed succeeds in having sex with the actress. When he tells Alice, he expects her to be jealous, but instead she is turned on. They again have sex and believe things to be going well. Having sex outside their relationship is improving their sex life. Carl observes a woman (Penelope) in a stereo store who is being pressured by an overzealous sales clerk. He helps install a new system for Penelope and her son Jake. Jake is angry at his mother because of her recent divorce. Ed has a date at a restaurant and turns out to be seated next to Alice and Donald; it is uncomfortable. Later, waiting for their cars, Ed and Alice talk. Ed is upset that Alice is seeing Donald, and she is upset that Ed has slept with so many women. Ed says they are supposed to be sleeping with other people, but she is just sleeping with one, as if it is a relationship. She says it is hard to sleep with other people with him living in the house. Ed agrees to move out. Alice is growing tired of Donald because he is needy. Ed is getting tired of meaningless sex. He eventually starts dating a woman named Sandy and grows to like her more and more. Breaking it off with Donald after finding out that he dates other women, Alice tries to get back with Ed. Ed, however, has feelings for Sandy at this point, but she is not quite what she seems. After a failed three-way in which the third girl straps on a dildo, Sandy suggests they try crack cocaine. In a self-destructive impulse, Alice tries to sleep with her sister's husband Peter. Her sister is having an affair with Ed's friend Lou. She shows up and all is revealed. Alice misses how comfortable and happy she used to be. Ed ends up stranded when Sandy runs off with his car after stealing a bag of crack. He walks all night and arrives at Alice's house just as everyone else is leaving. He pulls out a book of stamps that he bought weeks ago because he knew it to be one of the small things she loves. They sit side by side, not entirely sure where they go from here. 

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The film follows the parallel story of three friends who navigate family and love after graduating from college. The wealthiest of the three, Akash (Aamir Khan), is afraid of commitment, running away from any girl who tries to cling to him. On a trip to Goa, he goes out of his way to avoid Deepa, who is deeply in love with him. In contrast is Sameer (Saif Ali Khan), a clueless romantic who looks for love at every corner. When Akash tricks Sameer's girlfriend to dump him, he instead falls for a Swiss foreigner on the beaches of Goa. This ends disastrously for Sameer, however, as she is a swindler who dupes him of his money and belongings by the end of the trip. The last of the three, Siddharth aka Sid (Akshaye Khanna), is a painter who is often quiet and brooding. He is prone to searching for deeper meaning in all situations of life though he can be light-hearted in his interaction with his friends. After the three friends return from Goa, Sameer's parents try to set him up (for arranged marriage) with Pooja (Sonali Kulkarni), the daughter of their family friend. Sameer is in love at first sight, but finds out Pooja is seeing someone else. Sid meets a new neighbour, Tara (Dimple Kapadia), an older woman who has moved into a house at the end of the street. She is a single woman whose husband has left her and the custody of their daughter is with him. She shows great intelligence by decoding his nature entirely from his paintings, leading Sid to become attracted to her. Meanwhile, Akash's parents are intent on him learning to take responsibility. They suggest he manage the family business in Australia, but Akash is not ready yet. On Tara's birthday, when her daughter is to visit her secretly, a call from her ex-husband leaves her distraught. Sid tries to console her and the three friends take her out to dinner to celebrate instead. By the end of the night, Sid has realized he is in love, but drama unfolds when Akash, true to his nature, mocks Sid's newfound feelings. Sid slaps him in return and it seems their friendship is over. The next day, Sameer tries to play mediator but Sid has already left town to attend a painting workshop lasting a few weeks. Soon after, Akash flies off to Sydney. Left to his own measures, Sameer attempts to get close to Pooja who is visibly tiring of her current boyfriend. When she becomes single again, Sameer manages to ask her out. Akash, meanwhile, has made a friend in Shalini (Preity Zinta), an awkward acquaintance from college who he meets on the flight to Sydney. She agrees to show him around the new city, and with every meeting, Akash falls more for her. Soon, however, Shalini's fiancé, Rohit (Ayub Khan) shows up from India and escorts her home for their wedding. A heartbroken Akash also returns, expressing his feelings to his father who can sense his changed behaviour. Akash learns from Shalini's uncle that Rohit's parents adopted Shalini after her parents' death. Hence she is not able to refuse to their wishes of marrying Rohit. Convinced that Shalini also loves him, Akash crashes the wedding and proposes to her. A brief altercation with Rohit is subdued by her would-be in-laws, who suggest their son to simply "let [Shalini] go." In the present day, Tara has been admitted to the hospital with liver cirrhosis. Sid waits for news on her condition with Sameer giving him company. Still in India, Akash shows up the next morning to bury his grudge with Sid. In her final moments, Tara asks Sid to stay happy and then passes away leaving him distraught. Six months later, the three friends return for a trip to Goa, this time with Shalini and Pooja. At the campsite, Sid catches the eye of a pretty girl walking alone in the fields. He smiles at her, and as she smiles back, he begins walking in her direction. The film ends with all the three couples shown making a toast at a restaurant 

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Witold, a Polish writer, embarks on an ocean voyage only to have the war break out while he is visiting Argentina. Finding himself penniless and stranded after the Nazis take over his country, he is taken in by the local Polish emigre community. A fantastical series of twists and turns follow in which the young man finds himself, after a debauched night of drinking, involved as a second in a duel. Witold is constantly confronted with the exasperating contrasts between his love of country and his status as a forced expatriate and the shallow nationalism of his fellow Poles. 

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Very similar in theme to both The Flintstones and The Jetsons, The Roman Holidays brought a look at "modern-day" life in Ancient Rome, as seen through the eyes of Augustus "Gus" Holiday and his family. The opening showed a chariot traffic jam and a TV showing football on Channel "IV". An Ancient Roman setting was one of the ideas that Hanna-Barbera considered when creating The Flintstones. The Holidays, a Roman family living at the Venus DeMilo Arms Apartments in A.D. 63, dealt with a variety of modern-day problems. Gus Holiday worked at the Forum Construction Company for his demanding boss Mr. Tycoonius who is constantly threatening to fire Gus if an assignment he is given goes awry. He lived with his wife Laurie, children Precocia and Happius, and pet lion Brutus. Their neighbors are good friends Herman, Henrietta, and their daughter: Happy's girlfriend Groovia. Their lives are embittered by their exasperated landlord Mr. Evictus who tries to find proof of Brutus living with the Holidays, has a daughter named Snobbia, and excites Gus's tagline "Evictus will evict us!" 

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After leaving a party at a women's dormitory (aka the "virgin vault"), Matthew (Jonathan Tucker) is trapped in an elevator with an unknown, and unseen, woman when the power goes out. Matthew and this unknown woman have sex in the dark. When Matthew wakes up in the morning—still in the elevator—he finds himself alone with a pair of her panties. On a mission to find his mystery maiden by finding a matching bra for the panties, Matthew becomes the maintenance man of the virgin vault. After releasing mice, he goes room to room, setting traps. He convinces the panicked women to leave their rooms and then starts to look for a match. When he is unsuccessful, he continues to break things (such as the air conditioning) in an effort to find his woman. He also fixes the television set, which is greatly received by women he refers to as "Janeites", as they have a great interest in films adapted from books by Jane Austen. He doesn't get much help from his roommate Rod (James DeBello), who keeps telling him to give up, and together they philosophize about men and women. Rod tells him that he doesn't need a girlfriend and that it's futile to try to find the "bra matching the panties", and Matthew accuses him of being too macho. Rod introduces Matthew to the "penile power", which involves the use of weights attached to his penis as a means of increasing the organ's size. He does this and insults women to make himself feel better about the problem he has with his manhood; he suffers from hypospadias. Early on, Matthew watches as a woman named Patty (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and her boyfriend Crick (Johnny Green) fight. Crick is the epitome of the macho man stereotype, with his big pectorals, conceited attitude, and abusiveness. He wears a ponytail, a manicured goatee, "male make-up", and chews nicotine gum, much to Matthew's dismay. Matthew tries to save Patty, but is hurt by Crick. Crick leaves, and Patty tries to help Matthew, but Matthew can't help but think of Patty's reputation as a "slut." While searching one room, Matthew finds himself trapped in the bathroom when the occupant returns. Matthew is attacked by Wendy (Larisa Oleynik), until she recognizes him as a high school classmate. Wendy decides to help Matthew in his quest to find his mystery maiden, hoping that, in the process, she may find one of her own, as she is a closeted lesbian. Matthew is nervous about talking to girls. Arlene (Katherine Heigl) and his teacher Ms. Stern (Aimee Graham) disparage Matthew, asserting that women are more dominant than men are. Arlene beats him at foosball. Ms. Stern asserts that women, rather than men, should be in command. Rod tells Matthew that he's a chicken and should just give up on girls, while Matthew tells him that he has never been able to speak to girls, especially Cynthia (Jaime Pressly). Matthew puts an advertisement in the school newspaper asking the girl he's seeking to meet him in the basement on a Thursday night. He sits in the dark every Thursday night, waiting for her to show up. The door opens one night, and he thinks it's her, but it's Wendy, coming to check up on him. Finally, the mystery maiden does show up, only to tell him to stop looking for her. Despite the approach of the end of the semester, Matthew isn't deterred. He disguises himself in drag, as Francesca, as a means to continue his search. In drag, he is actually able to talk to Cynthia one on one which, (until she is injured later on after two students, who are moving furniture, accidentally drop a couch down the stairs crushing her), he is not able to do because he is intimidated by her good looks. Rod flirts with Francesca and later brags to Matthew that he had sex with Francesca. This makes Matthew so angry that he adds another weight onto Rod's "penile power" device, hurting him. Crick makes a pass at Matthew in drag while he fights with Patty. Matthew bites off part of Crick's tongue. As a result, Crick is unable to speak without lisping. Desperation sets in, so Matthew appeals to his mystery maiden by proclaiming his love for her to the whole dormitory. He finally determines his mystery maiden is Patty. She initially rejects him because she thought that he would see her only as a slut. Crick sees that Matthew wants Patty, but Matthew has him arrested for sexually assaulting him (when he was dressed as Francesca). Matthew introduces Rod and Dora, and Arlene and Wendy hook up. Cynthia shows off her newly found martial art abilities that she discovered as a way to cope with frustration following her injury, and Ms. Stern learns a valuable lesson on gender equality, as Matthew stands up to her in front of the class, to an ovation. Finally, Matthew proclaims his passionate love to Patty, who sees his loving eyes, and they kiss. 

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During a live fire exercise in the jungles of Panama, a team of Army Rangers trainees are led by Master Sergeant Nathan West. Sergeant Ray Dunbar emerges from the jungle carrying wounded Second Lieutenant Levi Kendall. The two men are pursued by Sergeant Mueller, whom Dunbar kills in self-defense. Although no other bodies are found, West's team is presumed dead. Dunbar refuses to talk to Military Police investigator Captain Julia Osborne and insists on speaking to a fellow Ranger from outside the base, drawing an '8' on a piece of paper. The post commander Colonel Bill Styles calls in his friend: experienced interrogator, ex-Ranger and now DEA agent Tom Hardy, and assigns him to aid Osborne. During interrogations of the survivors, they learn that West was infamous for being a ruthless, tough-as-nails sergeant. One of the trainees, Jay Pike, earned West's wrath for not following orders, and may have staged the murder. Kendall, son of a Joint Chiefs of Staff general and a homosexual, claims West hated him and may have ordered a "training accident" on him. He claims West died when hit in the back with a phosphorus grenade. When Pike confessed to the crime, Dunbar wanted to turn him in; a firefight ensued and most of the trainees were killed. Dunbar claims Kendall is lying and that Mueller and his fellow trainee Castro were illegally selling prescription drugs and West became aware of their drug dealing. Mueller used Pike's grenade to kill West and tried to frame Pike. A firefight broke out and several trainees were killed. Dunbar claims that Dr. Peter Vilmer supplied the drugs and falsified drug tests so that soldiers came out clean. After confessing to the crime, Vilmer is placed under arrest. Styles orders Osborne and Hardy not to talk to Kendall again. They disobey and interrogate Kendall once more, but he suddenly begins vomiting blood. Before dying, he draws an '8' with his own blood on Osborne's hand. Hardy explains a rumor about a group of ex-Rangers in Panama calling themselves "Section 8". They apparently trained under West, turned rogue and became drug dealers. Styles is furious; he relieves Osborne of duty and tells Hardy to leave. He considers the investigation closed and a CID transport from Washington arrives to take Vilmer and Dunbar away. Vilmer accidentally reveals that 'Dunbar' is actually Pike, and Hardy removes Pike from the plane just before takeoff. Pike explains that West learned about the actual operation going on at the base: cocaine smuggling. He confronted the Rangers and threatened to turn them in to authorities. After a brief firefight, West and the other trainees were killed. Pike took Dunbar's dog tags and carried Kendall to the extraction point. He then gives Hardy, Osborne, and Styles the number of a crate where Vilmer had stowed cocaine. Hardy confronts Styles, determining he was behind the drug- dealing operation the whole time. When West reported the operation to Styles, Styles ordered Mueller and Kendall to kill him in the jungle, then poisoned Kendall to silence him. Styles tries to bribe Hardy before attempting to shoot him; Styles is instead shot and killed by Osborne, who was eavesdropping on their talk. As the investigation concludes, Osbourne suspects that Hardy is somehow involved in the incident; this is confirmed when she watches Pike sneak into Hardy's car. She follows them into Panama City, where they enter a bar with a big eight-ball hanging above. After going inside, she is greeted by West and the missing members of the team — Castro, Dunbar, and Nuñez, who Hardy reveals as his 'colleagues'. They explain that Section 8 is a covert black-ops anti-drug unit led by Colonel Tom Hardy; the "insane mercenary" story is a cover to spook the cartels. The agents infiltrated the base undercover to investigate cocaine trafficking and discovered Mueller, Kendall and Vilmer were responsible. West, not realizing Styles was also involved, informed him of the drug dealing. The training mission became a covert Section 8 operation to circumvent Mueller and Kendall and fake West's death in order to extract West from leadership and transfer him back to Section 8. Hardy was called in to confirm Styles' and Vilmer's involvement. Impressed by her work, Hardy offers Osborne a job in the unit. 

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After saving a young boy from drowning and being awarded a "hero sash" when he was himself a 10-year-old, Ned Kelly (Heath Ledger) grows up in the British colony of Victoria where he was born. The son of a Catholic Irish settler, he lives with his widowed mother Ellen (Kris McQuade), his younger brother Dan (Laurence Kinlan), and his two younger sisters Kate (Kerry Condon) and Grace (Emily Browning). Ned's best friend Joe (Orlando Bloom) and Dan's best friend Steve (Philip Barantini) are also often at the house. One day in 1871, when he's 17-year-old, he sees a white mare grazing alone in the outback. He rides it into town to impress a local girl named Jane, only to be arrested and subsequently imprisoned for supposedly stealing the horse, even though it had actually been stolen by an acquaintance of his, Wild Wright. He is released and comes home three years later, and starts helping his family with their small horse-breeding farm located near Beechworth. He takes vengeance on Wild Wright by beating him in a prizefight, and befriends Julia Cook (Naomi Watts), the beautiful wife of an English land owner who lives nearby. One night at a bar, a local constable named Fitzpatrick is abusively courting Kate. Ned intervenes and hostilities erupt with Fitzpatrick and his fellow officers. To get back at Ned, they take the Kellys' horses, but with the help of his brother and their friends, Ned steals them back. Some nights later, while Ned and Julia are consummating their blossoming passion in the Cooks' stables, Fitzpatrick shows up at the Kelly farm and asks to see Kate; when she once more rejects him, he tries to arrest Dan for horse stealing, invoking non-existent warrants for him and Ned. A fight ensues and Fitzpatrick is wounded, and falsely reports that it's Ned Kelly who shot him. In retaliation, the police arrest Ned's mother. Ned asks Julia to testify he was with her the night Fitzpatrick was at the Kelly's farm, but she refuses, saying that she would be disgraced by the public acknowledgement of their affair and her husband would take her children away. Ned, Dan, Joe and Steve become outlaws on the run. They later meet a patrol in the bushland and kill three officers in a shootout, despite Ned's efforts to have nobody get hurt. During the following months the "Kelly Gang" avoids capture, living in the outback, often without food. On one occasion, Julia gives them shelter at her farm while her husband is away. A large bounty is placed on their heads, and a decree is passed that allows anybody to shoot them on sight without consequences. They rob two English banks and burn the mortgage documents with which the Crown is starving the selectors. They give the money from their robberies to poor families in need, and soon become acclaimed as folk heroes by the Victorian population as much as the media depict them as violent criminals. To solve a situation in danger of escalating into widespread revolt, the Colonial Government sends in stern Superintendent Francis Hare (Geoffrey Rush), who arrests many sympathizers including Joe's childhood friend Aaron (Joel Edgerton). Being promised they won't harm Joe, but only the Kellys, Aaron agrees to work as an informant. During a quick visit back into Beechworth, Joe learns Aaron has been seen talking with cops, so the gang decide to feed him false information about their next heist, to test his loyalty. When they see a large group of constables heading to the bank Aaron was told about, they know Aaron betrayed them, and Joe kills him at his house. Ned devises a plan to foil Superintendent Hare. The gang lures him in by taking over the town of Glenrowan. They gather everybody the townspeople, most of whom are friendly to their causes, at the Glenrowan Inn, to better protect them in the upcoming fight. In the meantime, they sabotage the railroad tracks leading into town, to derail the train on which Hare and his army of constables are traveling. They've also built metal helmets and plates of body armour to survive bullets. They count on the derailment to kill most of them constables, planning to then capture Hare and exchange him for Ned and Dan's mother. Unfortunately, an escaped hostage stops the train in time to avoid the incident. Hundreds of officers lay siege to the inn late at night. Determined to go out in a blaze of glory, the Kelly Gang emerge from the inn and begin shooting, protected by their armour, but are forced inside again. The police once again raid the inn, killing innocent civilians during the shootout. To buy the time needed for the townspeople to flee from the back, Ned exits and charges forward alone; he is ultimately shot in the arms and legs and falls out of sight. Near dawn, Joe is shot and dies inside the inn. Dan and Steve, down to their last bullets and knowing all is lost, commit suicide. Ned regains consciousness and even though gravely injured, continues to fire at the police. He is finally is shot to the ground and taken down. Ned is loaded onto the train to be brought back and face justice; Hare asks if he may have his beloved green-and-gold sash, which he's still wearing 15 years after he saved the drowning child. In the end, even with a petition of over 32,000 signatures strong asking for a pardon, Kelly is hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880. 

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The residents of the small town of Grover’s Corners in New Hampshire live peacefully and in harmony. Dr. Gibbs, his wife Julie, and their two children George and Rebecca are the neighbors of the Webbs, who have a lovely daughter, Emily. George and Emily fall in love and after three years of advertising they get married. Time goes by and Emily becomes very sick with the birth of her second child. While she is dying, she meets all the people who have left this world in the years before. Emily, who remains in a kind of in-between world, remembers her previous life, but in the end the young woman decides to live and she wakes up from her dream. 

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Los Angeles, 1992. The film opens in medias res to LAPD Sergeant Eldon Perry, who is pacing in a motel room with a shotgun and pistol. Five days earlier, four people are killed and one wounded when two men, Darryl Orchard and Gary Sidwell, rob a convenience store in order to gain access to a safe in the office. Meanwhile, Perry defends his partner, Detective Bobby Keough, before an internal hearing concerning Keough's use of deadly force in a previous case; Keough is later exonerated. Perry and Keough late celebrate the former's impending promotion with their superior, Jack Van Meter, who is also Keough's uncle. Van Meter, a corrupt cop who often encourages his subordinates to fabricate evidence, visits Orchard and Sidwell's house later that night and takes the money stolen from the safe, admonishing them for behaving recklessly during the robbery. Van Meter assigns Perry and Keough to investigate the robbery, providing a false alibi for Orchard and Sidwell and telling them to pin the crime on someone else. Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Arthur Holland finds Perry's testimony at Keough's hearing suspicious, doubting that Keough killed the suspect as he was charged. His assistant, Beth Williamson, pulls files on the two men and that a man she has had anonymous casual sex with is Keough. After obtaining a search warrant with underhanded techniques, a SWAT team raids the house of the ex-cons who are to be Perry's fall guys. One of the men escapes and goes into a back alley, but is caught by Perry and Keough. Under Perry's orders, Keough reluctantly kills the innocent man and is left visibly shaken. When Perry arrives home later, he learns that his wife is leaving him. Meanwhile, Keough visits Williamson and admits to the killing, offering to testify against Perry on corruption. Seeing both Perry and the robbers as loose ends, Van Meter sets them up to kill each other just as the Los Angeles riots begin. Believing that Perry was sent by Van Meter to kill Orchard and Sidwell, Keough and Williamson also drive to the robbers' address. While all three eventually meet up in the alleys, Keough is killed by Orchard and Sidwell. Williamson tearfully blames Perry for what happened. Perry calls in the incident, hesitating briefly before pursuing Orchard and Sidwell. As the riots unfold, Sidwell is dragged out of his car and beaten to death while Orchard is captured by Perry. Perry then heads to his promotion ceremony, where he confesses about the corruption, implicates Van Meter, and volunteers himself to be arrested. 

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The NSA-funded Quantum Tech (QT) Corporation has slated a project to develop Hypertime, a technology which allows the user's molecules to speed up to the point where the world appears in standstill. The NSA's leader Moore ends the project due to its high amount of risk. However, QT's CEO Henry Gates plans on using the technology to control Moore and dominate the world. He uses the prototype to stretch the weekend in order to give his lead scientist Earl Dopler time to fix the remaining glitch in the technology after his henchmen Richard and Jay prevent Earl's incognito departure at the airport. However, Earl being in Hypertime for too long has resulted in him aging rapidly in real time, with his molecular age continued at the same rate despite time slowing down. However, initially unknown to Gates, Dopler had sent a prototype to his former colleague Dr. George Gibbs. Gibbs' son Zak, with whom he has a strained relationship, discovers the watch accidentally and initially uses it for fun. Zak wins the heart of Francesca, a new Venezuelan girl at the school. Once Gates finds out about the leaked prototype, he sends his henchmen after Zak, who break into his house and search for evidence. Upon learning about the ulterior motive of QT Corporation, Zak sets out to warn his father of the danger he could be in. A chase ensues, with Zak crashing the van into a river, thus damaging the watch. He awakes in the hospital and barely evades Jay and Richard. He then goes in search of a hiding spot, after having been accused of stealing a van by the police. In a bid to retrieve the watch, QT Corporation enlists the help of national security agencies and portray Zak, his father and Dopler as wanted fugitives. Zak goes on the run with Francesca, locating the hotel that Gibbs was staying at, with Dopler also in pursuit of Gibbs. However, QT reach Gibbs first and kidnap him. Zak and Francesca wander the streets aimlessly before being captured by Dopler in the garbage truck. However, Francesca knocks Dopler out and she and Zak take Dopler hostage. Dopler reluctantly agrees to help save Gibbs, helps mend the broken watch, and creates guns which can take someone out of Hypertime and back into normal time. The guns are loaded with paintballs filled with frozen nitrogen, and the low temperature "freezes" a person back into normal time. With Dopler's help, Zak and Francesca break in, but get caught by QT. The two are thrown in a cell with Zak's dad. Zak accelerates while in Hypertime and becomes "light", helping the others break out as NSA agents arrive and defeat Gates' goons. Gates knocks Francesca out of Hypertime and prepares to do the same to Zak and his dad until Dopler arrives and defeats him. Gates and his henchmen are arrested, and the watches are confiscated. Dopler uses the machine he was building to reverse his aging effects of Hypertime, but it inadvertently changes him back into a teenager (Miko Hughes), meaning he will have to live with the Gibbs family for a few years, though he still has the voice of his full grown self. Zak enters a relationship with Francesca, reconciles with his father, reunites with his family, and earns a car he wanted. As Zak speeds off in his car with his sister Kelly, Francesca, and younger Dopler, it is revealed that he has not returned the watch and continues to have fun in Hypertime. 

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A group of people gather at a remote snowbound lodge in the wilds of northern New England. A seance is held in order to reach the dead husband of the medium. Remarried, the medium's husband wants permission from the dead man to open a tract of land to logging. During the seance, it appears that the spirit of the dead man returns to possess one of the group, using him as an instrument to murder another of the group. The hero, Rogan Kincaid, is an adventurer who takes it upon himself (with help from a Czech refugee, the daughter of the dead man, and others), to solve the mystery before the police are brought in. As impossibilities pile up (including a locked room murder, footprints that begin and end in the middle of an expanse of snow, and a murderer who seems to be able to fly after being taken over by a Windigo), it looks like the only explanation is a supernatural one. 

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The play begins with married couple Kate and Deeley smoking cigarettes and discussing Kate's old friend Anna, who is coming to visit them. Kate says that Anna was her only friend, but Anna had many friends. Deeley says he's never met Anna, and is surprised to hear that Kate and Anna roomed together 20 years ago. Kate says that Anna occasionally stole her underwear. In the next scene, Anna arrives, talking incessantly about the fun times she and Kate shared in their youth. Kate says very little. Deeley tells Anna that he first met Kate at a movie, and asked her out for coffee afterwards. Anna's rebuttal is a story about her time living with Kate, when she came home to find Kate sitting in silence while a young man sat in their arm chair crying. Anna couldn't see his face because his hand was covering it while he cried. Neither of them said anything to her, so she awkwardly went to bed. Kate went to bed as well, and the man continued to sob in the darkness for a while before getting up and walking over to Anna's bed. He stared at her for a while, but she ignored him. He then went to Kate's bed and lay across her lap, and then he left. Anna emphasizes to Deeley that she ignored the man because she would have nothing to do with him. Kate neither confirms nor denies either of their stories, and eventually decides to take a bath. While Kate is taking her bath, Deeley confronts Anna, telling her that he's met her before. He says she used to dress in black and get men to buy her drinks, and he fell for it, buying her a drink 20 years ago and going with her to party. They sat across the room from each other, and he looked up her skirt. A girl sat beside her and they talked, while Deeley was surrounded by men and lost track of the girls. When he got through the crowd to the couch where the girls had sat, they were gone. Anna pretends to have no idea what he's talking about, and he insists that she was trying to be Kate back then, mimicking her mannerisms and shy smile, but she wasn't as good at it. Deeley recounts first meeting Kate in a movie theater showing the film "Odd Man Out". Kate returns in her bathrobe, and the two compete for her attention, while she consistently says practically nothing. Eventually Anna admits that she once wore Kate's underwear to a party where a man unabashedly stared up her skirt. She goes on to tell Deeley that Kate always lent her underwear, asking her to wear it all the time. Kate says nothing, but when prompted to confirm or deny their stories, she says to Anna, "I remember you dead." Kate then goes on to describe how Anna had been dead in bed, covered in dirt, and how her body was gone when a man arrived. She told the man that no one slept in the extra bed, and he lay in it, thinking Kate would sleep with him. Instead, she nearly suffocated him with mud from the flower pot by the window, and his response was a proposal of marriage. 

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At home in his New York City apartment, John Shaft is drugged with a tranquilizer dart, then kidnapped and persuaded by threats of physical force, the promise of money, and the lure of a pretty tutor to travel to Africa, assuming the identity of a native-speaking itinerant worker. His job is to help break a criminal ring that is smuggling immigrants into Europe then exploiting them. But the villains have heard that he is on his way. Shaft must pass a test before being hired for the job; the test involves him surviving in a small, overheated room without water, and a floor covered in deep sand, mimicking the supposed conditions of Africa. Shaft covers himself with the sand, thereby avoiding heatstroke and winning the contract from his employer. Shaft must then embark upon a mission to infiltrate and destroy a human trafficking and slavery ring in West Africa and France. 

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The players are cast as slaves who are forced to fight in a fantasy gladiator arena, which is reason for the game title. The slaves are from a village where people are bred solely to be gladiators and fight for the pleasure of demon types to win their freedom. The players have the help of Balfus, a Spirit Mentor, and need to overcome the challenges and defeat the guardians of each arena. Spirit Mentors guide gladiators through the arena and Balfus is revealed to have done so for previous dead gladiators before the player. Balfus remains the source of drama since the protagonists are silent throughout the game and the antagonists do not go beyond taunting them. In their first arena fight, they defeat the guardian called "Wrathhoof", who refuses to accept defeat to let them pass to the next arena. Despite Balfus' warning that this would be against the rules, Wrathhoof continues to attack the players who then kill him. The players and Balfus try to keep this murder of a guardian a secret and embark to the next arena, where the next guardian Slarth, discovers what they did. Slarth and the next guardian Graw are revealed to be former gladiators themselves and Balfus, their mentor. The players then defeat and kill Slarth. On killing Graw, Balfus decides to end this gladiator event by killing the remaining guardian Mordar and the final guardian called "The Master". 

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Michael Turner. While Elongated Man is on a stakeout, during which a minor villain called Bolt is shot and wounded by criminals, his wife Sue Dibny is murdered in their apartment, apparently dying of burns. The DC superhero community rallies to find the murderer, with recurring villain Doctor Light being the prime suspect. Green Arrow reveals to the Flash (Wally West) and Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) that Light once raped Sue Dibny in the JLA satellite headquarters. To ensure this could not happen again to Sue, another Justice League member or their loved ones, the members at that time — Atom (Ray Palmer), Black Canary, Hawkman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and a very reluctant Flash (Barry Allen) — voted to allow the sorceress Zatanna to mind-wipe the villain and alter his personality to an ineffectual buffoon. Further discussion reveals that a mind wipe was also done on at least one other occasion: when the Secret Society of Super Villains (the Wizard, Floronic Man, Star Sapphire, Reverse-Flash, and Blockbuster) captures JLA members Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Zatanna and Black Canary (Wonder Woman in the pre-Crisis continuity) and switched bodies with the heroes, allowing the villains to learn their secret identities by casually removing the heroes' masks. Although the heroes defeated the villains, Zatanna once again erased the villains' memories of the incident and their knowledge of the secret identities.Justice League of America #166-168 (May–July 1979) Green Arrow's words also imply that they have done this on other occasions when their secret identities were threatened by magic or other means. The heroes locate Light, who has hired the mercenary Deathstroke to protect him. During the ensuing battle, Light regains his memory and, enraged by the violation, uses his formerly lost powers to escape. Although questioned by Superman, Wally West continues to protect the heroes and their secret. Atom finds his estranged ex-wife, Jean Loring, hanging from a door, blindfolded and gagged, and revives her just in time, but she is unable to describe her attacker. A death threat is then sent to Superman's wife, Lois Lane. Flash Rogues gallery villain Captain Boomerang (Digger Harkness) is hired by third- rate villain the Calculator (on behalf of the real killer) to assassinate Jack Drake, father of Robin, Tim Drake. Jack finds a gun and a note warning him of the impending attempt on his life, and fatally shoots Boomerang who also kills him. Tim Drake comes upon the aftermath of this and is comforted by partner Batman, who confiscates the note before the authorities or the media can learn of its existence. During questioning of several villains by the heroes, former League member Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond) is stabbed through the chest with the sword of the Shining Knight by the villain the Shadow Thief. Firestorm's nuclear powers reach critical mass and he detonates in the atmosphere. Wally West questions Green Arrow again after accidentally seeing a snapshot of the battle on the Satellite in Light's mind, which reveals that Batman was also present. Green Arrow confesses that Batman had left immediately after the battle, but unexpectedly returned just as the mind wipe was taking place. He disapproved of this and nearly attacked the other heroes; he was magically restrained and his memory of the incident was removed. Batman uses his detective skills to find the hideout of the Calculator, but discovers the villain anticipated this and abandoned it. The autopsy of Sue Dibny's body by Doctor Mid-Nite and Mister Terrific, members of the Justice Society, reveals Dibny was killed by an infarction in her brain. A microscopic scan of Dibny's brain reveals tiny footprints as a clue to the infarction's cause. Doctor Mid- Nite and Mister Terrific realize, as does Batman in the course of his own investigation, that Dibny was murdered by an assassin with access to the technology of the Atom, which allows the ability to shrink to subatomic size. Almost simultaneously, Palmer learns that Jean is aware of the note sent to Jack Drake (which had been kept secret) and deduces she is the killer. Loring claims she did not mean to kill Sue, and it was not her intention for Jack Drake to be killed, arguing that she sent the note and gun so he could protect himself. Loring states that she undertook the plan (including faking the attempt on her own life) in order to bring Ray back into her life. Palmer says that she is insane, and Loring is committed to Arkham Asylum and kept under heavy medication. In the final scene with the Justice League, Wally West is awkward in the presence of Batman, who is suspicious of his behavior. 

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Dirk Pitt is up against an international drug smuggling ring and the evil Bruno Von Till, a German pilot who survived both World Wars to become one of the most ruthless smugglers in history. The novel is set in the Aegean Sea, where Dirk Pitt has been sent with Al Giordino to assist Rudi Gunn, with an expedition being conducted by NUMA. 

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Opening of the novella, first edition, 1810 The Brandenburg horse dealer Michael Kohlhaas is leading a team of horses in the direction of Saxony when an official of the nobleman Junker Wenzel von Tronka detains him, claiming that he does not have proper transit papers. The official demands that Kohlhaas leave two horses as collateral. In Dresden (the Saxon capital) Kohlhaas discovers that this collateral was totally arbitrary, and proceeds to demand return of his horses. When he arrives at the castle of Junker Tronka he discovers that the horses have been suffering from working in the fields and his hired man, who protested against the mistreatment of the horses, has been beaten. Kohlhaas sues the Junker for the cost of medical treatment of his hired man and for rehabilitation of his horses. After one year he finds that the suit was turned down through political influence of the Junker's relatives. Kohlhaas persists in demanding his rights. In spite of support of a friendly politician and personal engagement of his wife (who is struck down by a guard in her attempt to deliver a petition to the Elector of Saxony and later dies of her injuries), he remains unsuccessful. Since the administrative "old boys' club" prevents any progress through legal channels, Kohlhaas resorts to criminal means. He begins a private war. Together with seven men he destroys the castle of the Junker, who in the meantime has fled to Wittenberg, and slaughters the remaining servants (including an infant). Kohlhaas frees his horses, but then ditches them in the castle in order to lead his growing "army" (really a mob) to Wittenberg, demanding the Junker. In spite of numerous attacks of his 400-man army on Wittenberg he fails to secure the Junker. Through personal intervention of Martin Luther an amnesty is arranged, whereby the Elector of Saxony approves the suit against the Squire. But the Junker again activates his influential family and Kohlhaas is thrown into a dungeon in Brandenburg. The Elector of Brandenburg manages to have Kohlhaas released, but since in the meantime Saxony has informed the Kaiser in Vienna, the ruling families in Berlin feel this threat to the authority of the aristocracy must be handled with severity. In spite of surprising efforts of the Elector of Brandenburg to save Kohlhaas, he is sentenced to death. Later it turns out that Kohlhaas has on his person papers that contain important information about the House of Saxony. As Kohlhaas is led to execution, he sees in the crowd the disguised Elector of Saxony. Through his lawyer, he is informed that his suit against the Junker has been successful, and is presented with compensation for the injuries of his hired man and shown the horses, now well-fed and healthy. Pleased that justice has been served, he submits willingly to the execution. However, shortly before being beheaded, he opens the amulet on his neck containing the papers regarding the House of Saxony and swallows them. The Elector of Saxony is so distressed by this act that he faints, and Kohlhaas is beheaded shortly thereafter. 

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Nick "The Zone" Falzone (John Cusack) and his fellow air traffic controllers at the New York TRACON pride themselves on their ability to handle the intense stress of being a controller for one of the busiest airspaces in the country, even boasting of the 50% drop-out rate for new additions to the staff who are unable to cope with the pressure. The group is joined by the quiet and confident Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton), a veteran of TRACONs in the Western United States. Russell quickly proves to be exceptionally capable of handling the increased workload by using unorthodox and risky methods. Nick feels challenged by the new controller's ability to out-perform him at seemingly every task and warns his supervisor that Bell is a loose cannon, especially after discovering that Russell once stood on a runway to allow himself to be violently propelled by a landing commercial airliner's jetwash. At a supermarket, Nick encounters Russell's despondent young wife Mary (Angelina Jolie), who is sobbing over a grocery cart full of alcohol. In consoling her, Nick ends up back at the Bells' house, where he and Mary both cheat on their respective spouses by having sex. Several days later, Mary informs Nick that she immediately told Russell about the affair, and that the confession has actually improved their marriage. Fearing retaliation, Nick confronts Russell at work, and is confused and surprised by Russell's even- tempered response to the situation. Meanwhile, Nick's wife, Connie (Cate Blanchett), seems to become more and more intrigued by Russell, and Nick becomes increasingly paranoid that Russell will eventually seek revenge by having sex with her. While out of town for his father-in-law's funeral, Nick can't bring himself to lie when a grieving Connie challenges him to say that he has never cheated on her. As their flight home approaches New York, Connie tells Nick that she has indeed slept with Russell. The plane then makes an odd turn, and Nick assumes that Russell is harassing him, or possibly going insane, by purposely directing the plane into a dangerous storm. Soon after going to TRACON to confront Russell, a bomb threat is called in to the facility. The building is evacuated as both Nick and Russell volunteer to stay behind to handle the daunting task of landing all the planes on approach in their airspace before the alleged bomb is set to go off in 26 minutes. Successfully routing all but one plane that has lost radio contact, Nick leaves the building as the deadline approaches, while Russell instead remains inside to make contact with the plane by calling one of its passengers via Airfone. Russell is lauded as a hero for making the effort despite the threat, which turned out to be a hoax. Russell abruptly quits and he and Mary move to Colorado. Connie leaves Nick, and his performance at work suffers; the once cocky, boastful controller is sent home after being responsible for two "deals" (near mid-air collisions) in one shift. After learning that Russell had ordered the diversion of Nick's flight not to provoke him, but to clear a path to make a plane with a medical emergency on board next in line for a landing, Nick impulsively drives out to Colorado to make amends with Russell. Nick seeks his advice on how to get his personal life back in order, but Russell is unable to make Nick understand with words. He instead brings Nick to a runway so that he too can experience being caught in a landing aircraft's turbulence. The two engage in the stunt together, and it has a profound effect on Nick, who thanks Russell. He returns to New York, where he regains his form at work, and reconciles with Connie. 

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Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated man who has inherited a real estate agency from his father, his ambitious wife Mame, and his friend Roosevelt Hicks want to redevelop the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The project, called the Bedford Hills Redevelopment Project, includes two high-rise apartment buildings and high-end chain stores like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Barnes & Noble. Harmond is also about to declare his candidacy to be Pittsburgh's first black mayor. Roosevelt has just been named a vice-president of Mellon Bank and has been tapped by a Bernie Smith to help him acquire a local radio station at less than market value, which is possible through a minority tax incentive. A complication arises when Harmond discovers that the house at 1839 Wylie, slated for demolition, was acquired illegally. Harmond offers the owner of the property market value for the house, but the owner refuses to sell. Harmond decides the only way to proceed is to build around the house, which will require minor modifications to the planned development, and calls the demolition company to cancel the demolition. Roosevelt sees no reason to delay since no one but Harmond, Roosevelt, Mame, and the house's owner know the truth, a view Mame supports. When, on the day of the demolition, which Roosevelt has put back into motion, Harmond refuses to be swayed from his stand, Roosevelt announces he will be buying Harmond out and Bernie Smith will be helping him. Harmond accuses Roosevelt of being Smith's "black face" and the two argue over the consequences of Harmond demanding changes in the development plans and if Roosevelt is allowing himself to be used by Bernie Smith. Harmond tells Roosevelt to leave the Bedford Hills Redevelopment office, which is owned by Wilks Realty. The scene ends with Harmond leaving the office to join the group of Hill residents at 1839 Wylie protesting the demolition. 

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Set thousands of years in the future (AD 5407), the human race has been conquered by the Qax, a truly alien turbulent-liquid form of life, who now rule over the few star systems of human space – adopting processes from human history to effectively oppress the resentful race. Humans have encountered a few other races, including the astoundingly advanced Xeelee, and been conquered once before – by the Squeem – but successfully recovered. A human-built device, the Interface project, returns to the solar system after 1,500 years. The project, towed by the spaceship Cauchy, returns a wormhole gate, appearing to offer time travel due to the time 'difference' between the exits of the wormhole (relativistic time dilation), with one end having remained in the solar system and the other travelling at near lightspeed for a century. The Qax had destroyed the solar system gate, but a lashed-up human ship (a great chunk of soil including Stonehenge, crewed by a group called the Friends of Wigner) passes through the returning gate, travelling back to the unconquered humanity of 1,500 years ago. One of the crew of the Cauchy returns with the Friends, Miriam Berg. The Friends have a complex scheme, which does not include a simple military return-and-rescue – the 1,500-year technology gap makes this "risible". From the Wigner thought experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe. They believe that quantum wave-functions do not collapse like the Copenhagen interpretation holds, nor that each collapse actually buds off separate universes (like the quantum multiverse hypothesis holds) but rather that the universe is a participatory universe: the entire universe exists as a single massive quantum superposition, and that at the end of time (in the open universe of the Xeelee Sequence, time and space are unbounded, or more precisely, bounded only at the Cauchy boundaries of "Time-like infinity" and "Space-like infinity"), when intelligent life has collected all information (compare the Final anthropic principle and the Omega Point), and transformed into an "Ultimate Observer", who will make the "Final observation", the observation which collapses all the possible entangled wave-functions generated since the beginning of the universe. They believe further that the Ultimate Observer will not merely observe, but choose which world line will be the true world-line, and that it will choose the one in which humanity suffers no Squeem or Qax occupations. However, the Ultimate Observer cannot choose between worldlines if no information survives to its era to distinguish worldlines- if the UO never knows of humanity, it cannot choose a worldline favourable to it. In other words, some way is needed to securely send information forward in time. As a consequence of this necessity, they intend to turn Jupiter into a carefully formed singularity and use the precisely specified parameters as a method of encoding information. Miriam Berg is more concerned over the immediate fate of humanity, with the threat of the future Qax, and transmits a 'help' message to the gate designer Michael Poole. The Qax, naturally, panic a little at the escape to the past. A complex, unavoidably fragile species in their huge living Spline spacecraft, the few Qax present are somewhat at a loss. They decide to build their own Interface, with major human-collaborator assistance (headed by Ambassador Jasoft Parz), to create a link to their future to gain aid in resolving the problem – with more modern GUT-engine spacecraft they can make a 500-year link in just eighteen months. A startling high-technology future vessel (in truth, one of the legendary Xeelee nightfighters, an advanced and long-range fast scout ship), with a future Qax comes through the gate. Its first act is to execute the Qax Governor of Earth and gather up Parz, before passing through the original portal after the Friends and all humanity. The future Qax takes two Spline ships (presumably leaving behind the nightfighter; this might be the nightfighter that is discovered by the crew of The Great Northern millennia later in Ring) through the gate and on the journey reveals to Parz the reason behind its desire to completely destroy the human race. 

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George Brent (second from left) and Bette Davis in Jezebel Fonda and Davis In 1852 New Orleans, spoiled, strong-willed belle Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) is engaged to banker Preston "Pres" Dillard (Fonda). In an important meeting, Pres is trying to convince the board to invest in railroads, as Northerners are doing, and supporting Dr. Livingstone's (Crisp) plea for measures to prevent an otherwise inevitable outbreak of yellow fever. In retaliation for Pres refusing to leave the meeting and accompany her to the last fitting for a ball gown, she buys a brazen red satin dress ordered by a notorious woman. At the Olympus Ball, the most important social event of the year, unmarried women are expected to wear virginal white. All of Julie's friends are horrified, but no one can convince her to give up her whim. At the Olympus ball, Pres and Julie's entrance is met with shock and disgust by all present. She finally realizes the magnitude of her social blunder and begs Pres to take her away, but instead he forces her to dance with him while all others withdraw from the floor and turn their backs. When the orchestra stops playing at the instruction of one of the ball's sponsors, Pres orders the conductor to continue. Pres and Julie finish the dance. Afterwards, Pres takes his leave of Julie, implicitly breaking their engagement. In a final act of spite, Julie slaps him in the face. Aunt Belle Massey (Fay Bainter) urges her to go after Pres, but she refuses, confident that he will return to her. Instead, he goes North on business. Julie shuts herself up in her house and refuses to see visitors. A year later, Pres finally returns, bringing his Northern wife, Amy (Margaret Lindsay). to the homecoming party planned for him at Halcyon Plantation, Julie's estate. Aunt Belle cannot find Julie to warn her. Wearing a luminous white gown, before Pres can stop her, Julie humbles herself and begs for his forgiveness and a return of his love. Pres introduces her to Amy. Dismayed but controlled, Julie eggs on her longtime admirer, skilled duellist Buck Cantrell (Brent), to quarrel with Pres, but the scheme goes awry. It is Pres's inexperienced brother, Ted (Richard Cromwell), who is goaded into challenging Buck. In an unexpected twist, Ted shoots and kills Buck. Then something happens that overshadows everything else. As Dr. Livingstone foretold, a deadly epidemic has swept the city. They fight it with cannon and smoke and, believing that yellow fever is highly contagious, a quarantine so rigid that people who try to escape the city are shot. In New Orleans, Pres is stricken and, like all other victims, is to be quarantined in the leper colony on Lazaret island. Julie persuades Gros Bat (Anderson) to take her through the woods to Dr. Livingstone's, where she nurses Pres for a night and a day. The family arrives, thanks to a pass from the governor. When the wagon comes for Pres, Amy begs to go with him, but Julie tells her that she is not equipped to fight for Pres. She does not know the creole words for food and water, or how to deal with the conditions or the people there. Julie begs to go in Amy's place, as an act of redemption. Amy agrees, but asks if Pres still loves Julie. Julie declares that he loves only his wife. Amy blesses them, and Julie holds her head high as the wagonload of victims and caregivers, including a nun, bears them into an unknown future. 

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When concert pianist Sandra Kovak (Mary Astor) and her aviator husband Peter Van Allen (George Brent) discover their impulsive marriage is invalid because her divorce had not been finalized before they wed, he leaves her and marries his old flame Maggie Patterson (Bette Davis). Peter travels to Brazil on business and, when his aircraft goes missing, it is presumed it crashed in the jungle and he was killed. Sandra discovers she is pregnant by Peter, and Maggie proposes she be allowed to raise the child as her own in exchange for taking care of Sandra financially. The two women go to Arizona to await the birth, and Sandra delivers a boy, who is named after his father. Sandra embarks upon a world tour, during which Peter, who survived the crash, returns home, and Maggie leads him to believe the boy is theirs. Sandra, wanting both father and son for herself, taunts Maggie that Peter has remained with her only because of the boy and demands she confess she misled him. When Maggie explains the true situation, Peter is shocked by Sandra's behavior and announces she may take the baby but he will remain with Maggie. Sandra, accepting that Peter truly loves Maggie and knowing Maggie will be a far better mother to the child, sits down at the piano and announces she is leaving the child with his mother as she plays Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. 

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Army veteran Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the Hotel Largo in Key Largo, Florida, visiting the family of George Temple, a friend who served under him and was killed in the Italian campaign several years before. He meets with the friend's widow Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall) and father James (Lionel Barrymore), who owns the hotel. Because the winter vacation season has ended and a hurricane is approaching, the hotel has only six guests: dapper Toots (Harry Lewis), boorish Curly (Thomas Gomez), stone-faced Ralph (William Haade), servant Angel (Dan Seymour), attractive but aging alcoholic Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), and a sixth man who remains secluded in his room. The visitors claim to be in the Florida Keys for fishing. Frank tells Nora and James about George's heroism under fire and shares some small and cherished details that George had spoken of. Nora and her father-in-law seem taken with Frank, stating that George frequently mentioned Frank in his letters. While preparing the hotel for the hurricane, the three are interrupted by Sheriff Ben Wade (Monte Blue) and his deputy Sawyer (John Rodney). They are searching for the Osceola brothers, a pair of fugitive American Indians. Soon after the police leave, the local Seminoles seek shelter at the hotel, among them the Osceola brothers. As the storm approaches, Curly, Ralph, Angel, and Toots pull guns and take the Temples and Frank hostage. They explain that the sixth member of their party is notorious gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), who was exiled to Cuba some years before. Rocco is waiting for his Miami contacts to arrive to conclude a deal. The gang discover Deputy Sawyer looking about and capture him. A tense standoff ensues. Frank declines to fight a duel with Rocco, stating his belief in self-preservation over heroics and that "one Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for”. Rocco shoots Sawyer, and Rocco's men take Sawyer's body out on a rowboat in the approaching storm and drop it in the ocean. The storm rages outside. Inside, Rocco forces his former moll, Gaye, to sing for them but then demeans her. In contrast, Frank politely gives her the promised drink and ignores Rocco's slaps. Nora understands that Frank's heroism matches her husband's, who was killed around Monte Cassino in Italy. Mr. Temple invites Frank to live with them at the hotel, a prospect that intrigues Nora. The storm finally subsides. Sheriff Wade returns looking for Deputy Sawyer. When the sheriff discovers his deputy's body washed up by the storm on the hotel driveway in his car's headlights, Rocco blames Sawyer's death on the Osceola brothers. Wade confronts and kills them both before leaving with Sawyer's body. Rocco's contact Ziggy (Marc Lawrence) arrives to buy a large amount of counterfeit money. Rocco then forces Frank, who is a skilled seaman, to take him and his henchmen back to Cuba on the smaller hotel boat. As the gang prepares to board the boat, Gaye steals Rocco's gun and covertly passes it to Frank. Out on the Straits of Florida, Frank uses seamanship, trickery, and the stolen gun to kill the gang members one by one. He then heads back to Key Largo, while radioing for Coast Guard help and to get a message to the hotel. Meanwhile, Gaye tells Wade that Rocco bears the blame for Deputy Sawyer's murder. Wade mentions that Ziggy's gang has been captured and leaves with Gaye to identify them. The phone rings: James and Nora are delighted to hear that Frank is returning safely. Nora opens the shutters to the sun while out at sea Frank steers the boat towards shore. 

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The film is set within Terminal 3 of London Heathrow Airport during a fog. As flights are delayed, the VIPs (very important people) of the title play out the drama of their lives in a number of slightly interconnected stories. The delays have caused serious hardship for most of the characters and have plunged some of them into a deep personal or financial crisis. The central story concerns famed actress Frances Andros (Elizabeth Taylor) trying to leave her husband, millionaire Paul Andros (Richard Burton), and fly away with her suitor Marc Champselle (Louis Jourdan). Because of the fog, Andros has the opportunity to come to the airport to persuade his wife not to leave him. The Duchess of Brighton (Margaret Rutherford) is on her way to Florida to take a job, which will pay her enough money to save her historic home. Meanwhile, film producer Max Buda (Orson Welles) needs to leave London, taking his newest protégée Gloria Gritti (Elsa Martinelli) with him, by midnight if he is to avoid paying a hefty tax bill. Les Mangrum (Rod Taylor), an Australian businessman, must get to New York City to prevent his business from being sold. His dutiful secretary, Miss Mead (Maggie Smith), is secretly in love with him. It being a matter of great urgency, she decides to approach Paul Andros and ask him to advance a sum of money that will save Mangrum's company. Buda spots a poster picturing the Duchess's home. She is offered a sum of money if she will permit Buda to use it as a location in a film, enough to keep the house she loves. Andros, meanwhile, about to lose the woman he loves, is spared a possible suicide at the last minute when he and his wife reconcile. 

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In San Francisco of the early 1970s, Don Baker, who was born blind, has lived all his life with his mother. When Don was young, Mrs. Baker wrote a series of popular children’s books about Little Donny Dark, a blind boy who performs heroic deeds. Don moves into an apartment on his own, but finds himself all alone. He has made a contract that his mother will not come to see him for at least two months. One month has passed. This is when Jill Tanner moves into an adjoining apartment. She listens to Don talking to his mother over the phone and turns on the radio. When Don asks her to turn the volume down, she invites herself over for a cup of coffee. They start talking and find each other friendly. Jill does not realize that Don is blind until she sees him dropping his cigarette ash on the table. Jill never had met a blind man before, so she asks all sorts of questions about how Don manages everyday chores. Jill tells Don that her favorite quote is: "I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies." (From Dickens' Bleak House.) She takes him to Asparagus, a Bohemian clothing store, where owner Roy helps them pick out some free- spirited fashion. Back home, Don makes up a song and starts to sing "Butterflies Are Free" on his guitar. They discover they can unlock the door separating their two apartments. Surprising Don with a visit, Mrs. Baker sees that Don has attached himself to Jill. She also encounters them in the apartment partially undressed. She fears that Jill will break Don's heart. She takes Jill out for a lunch and tries to talk her out of Don's life. Jill has strong feelings for Don and tells Mrs. Baker that if there is someone who should get out of Don's life, it is she. Following Mrs. Baker's input, Jill later breaks a dinner date at Don's apartment, showing up much later with Ralph, the director of the play she has auditioned for. Jill hesitantly announces that she is moving in with Ralph, trying too hard to convince Don, and herself, that it is a great idea. When Jill goes to pack her things, a heartbroken Don asks his mother if he can move back home. She talks him out of it, pointing out that her Little Donny Dark books had been her way of helping young Don face his fears, and she (sadly) must do the same now. They finally make peace over their new roles in life. Jill and Don fight over her moving out, and Don tells her she is the one who is disabled. She leaves but returns to Don, and the two reconcile. 

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Route taken by Del Griffith and Neal Page in the film Neal Page is a marketing account executive on a business trip in New York City, eager to return to his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving, which is in two days. After attending a tedious business meeting that ends without a decision, Neal unsuccessfully attempts to hail a cab during rush hour. He is further delayed after paying a greedy attorney for a cab that is inadvertently stolen by Del Griffith, a loquacious traveling salesman who sells shower curtain rings. Neal and Del cross paths again at LaGuardia Airport, where they board a plane to O'Hare. Their plane is diverted to Wichita due to a blizzard in Chicago. Neal discovers that, because of the adverse weather, he is stuck in Wichita, and no hotel rooms are available. Del manages to book a room, and Neal accompanies him to a poorly-maintained motel. During the night, Neal loses his temper with Del and lambastes him for being annoying and having caused him so much trouble. In response, Del admits that he can be annoying but regards Neal as a cold-hearted cynic; despite how Neal feels about him, Del likes himself, and his wife and customers like him. Neal calms down, and the two men go back to bed. As they sleep, a burglar breaks into the room and steals all of their cash. The following day, they attempt to reach Chicago by train. To Neal's relief, their assigned seats are in separate cars and they say goodbye prior to boarding. En route, the locomotive breaks down, stranding the passengers in a Missouri field where Del and Neal are reunited. After they reach Jefferson City, Del raises cash by selling shower curtain rings to passersby, advertising the items as jewelry. Del uses the funds to buy bus tickets. After arriving in St. Louis, Neal inadvertently offends Del over lunch, and the two part ways again. At the St. Louis airport, Neal attempts to rent a car but finds the space at the distant rental lot empty. After a long and perilous walk across a highway and the airport runway, Neal arrives back at the terminal and vents his anger with a profanity-laced tirade at the rental agent to no avail. In desperation, he attempts to hire a taxi to Chicago but insults the dispatcher who then punches Neal. By chance, Del arrives with his own rental car just in time to rescue Neal. While driving, they find themselves arguing again. The situation is made worse when Del nearly gets them killed on a freeway after driving in the wrong direction, scraping between two oncoming semi-trailer trucks. While they take a moment to compose themselves by the side of the road, Del's carelessly discarded cigarette sets fire to the car's interior. Neal initially gloats, thinking that Del is liable for the damage. Neal's amusement turns to anger when Del reveals that he used Neal's credit card to rent the car after their cards were accidentally switched. With his credit cards destroyed in the fire, Neal barters his expensive Piaget watch for a motel room for himself. Del is broke and attempts to sleep in the car, which has lost its roof in the fire. Neal eventually feels sympathy for Del and invites him in from the cold and snowy night. They consume Del's collection of airline liquors and laugh about the events of the past two days. The pair resume driving to Chicago the next morning but are stopped for speeding by a state trooper who declares their fire-damaged car unsafe and has it impounded. Del manages to get them a ride in the back of a refrigerator truck, and the pair finally make it to Chicago on Thanksgiving Day. Neal and Del finally part ways at a Chicago "L" station. On the train home, Neal reminisces about the wild events of the past few days and begins to laugh. He remembers cryptic comments Del made during the journey and realizes that Del may be alone for the holiday. Struck by compassion, Neal quickly returns to the station, finds Del sitting alone, and asks why he has not gone home. Del reveals that he does not have a home and that his wife died eight years earlier. Neal returns home to his family and introduces them to Del, whom he has invited to Thanksgiving dinner. 

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Special forces agent and black operative Al Simmons is assigned by his superior, Jason Wynn, to infiltrate a biochemical weapons plant in North Korea, despite Simmons' growing moral qualms with the nature of his work. Unknown to Simmons, Wynn has ordered his top assassin Jessica Priest to murder him while he is on the mission. After Simmons dies, he is set on fire by Wynn and the flames cause the plant to explode. Simmons arrives in Hell, where one of the rulers of Hell - Malebolgia - offers him a Faustian deal: if Simmons becomes his eternal servant and leader of his army in Armageddon, he will be able to return to Earth to see his fiancée, Wanda Blake. Simmons accepts the offer and returns to Earth. Upon his return, Simmons learns that five years have passed since his death. Wanda is now married to his best friend Terry Fitzgerald, who is living as the father to Al's daughter Cyan. Soon Simmons encounters a clown-like demon named Violator, sent by Malebolgia, who acts as Simmons's guide down the path to evil. He also meets and befriends a young homeless boy named Zack and a mysterious old man named Cogliostro, a fellow Hellspawn, who has successfully freed his soul and now fights for Heaven. Simmons learns that Wynn, who is now a weapons dealer, has developed a biological weapon called Heat 16. During a reception, Spawn attacks Wynn, kills Jessica, and escapes with the help of his necroplasm armor. Following the attack by Simmons, Violator convinces Wynn to have a device attached to his heart that will release Heat 16 worldwide if his vital signs flatline as a deterrent against assassination attempts. However, Malebolgia wants Simmons to kill Wynn and initiate the apocalypse. Spawn confronts Violator, who turns into his demonic form and beats Al down. Cogliostro rescues Al and teaches him how to use his necroplasm armor with Zack. Simmons learns that Violator and Wynn are going to kill Terry, Cyan, and Wanda. Terry sends an email incriminating Wynn to a fellow newsman. Just as the email is sent, Cyan and Wynn enter the room. Wynn destroys Terry's computer and takes the family hostage. Spawn, Cogliostro and Zack arrive and nearly kills Wynn, but Al extracts the device from Wynn's body instead and destroys it. With his plan foiled, Violator sends Spawn and Cogliostro to Hell, where they both battle the demon before subduing him. Spawn is then confronted by Malebolgia, who tells Spawn that he will never lead Hell's army. Spawn escapes with Cogliostro just before they are overwhelmed by Malebolgia's forces. Violator, having recovered, follows them. A final battle ensues, ending with Spawn decapitating the demon with his chains. Violator's head taunts the group and threatens his return before melting and returning to Hell. Wynn is arrested, and Spawn, realizing there is no place for him in Wanda's world anymore, dedicates himself to justice rather than succumbing to his lust for vengeance and returns to the streets with Cogliostro and Zack. 

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The Wallflower is about a girl named Sunako who was called ugly by the first and only person to whom she confessed her love. This incident sparks a life change, and as a result Sunako shuns all forms of beauty, both in herself as well as in life. Concerned by her change for the worse, Sunako's aunt, the owner of a huge mansion where four very handsome high school students live (for free), demands the boys to transform her niece into the "perfect lady," and in return they will be able to continue living there for free. They are given a deadline and if they are unable to uphold their deal then they would have to either pay a lump sum of cash or vacate the premises. While the four of them manage to make Sunako physically beautiful enough to become a lady, the problem lies with her attitude and interests (which Sunako has no intention of changing). Up until the most recent release in the story, they manage to convince Sunako's aunt that her niece is indeed a lady befitting the mansion in which they live (and prevent the rent from skyrocketing to triple the required amount). However, in reality Sunako has not changed at all. Sunako has the tendency to spurt out in a nose bleed when seen by bright creatures, especially around Kyohei. It is a humorous tale following Sunako and the four boys through unusual and ridiculous situations where Sunako is confronted with many unwanted experiences of being a lady, while also channeling the idea of self and beauty. 

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Inspector Eddie Chan of the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau, who suffers from emotional stress after shooting several men in self- defense, is assigned to track down the kidnapped businessman Wong Yat-fei. The search takes him from Hong Kong to Taiwan, causing him to cross paths with some powerful mobsters. What complicates matters is that one of the kidnappers is operating within the police force, determined to stop Chan from succeeding. The relentlessly driven Chan finds himself fighting his personal demons at the same time he battles the seemingly unending wave of crime in the city. 

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The protagonist is Guy Crouchback, heir of a declining aristocratic English Roman Catholic family. Guy has spent his thirties at the family villa in Italy shunning the world after the failure of his marriage and has decided to return to England at the very beginning of the Second World War, in the belief that the creeping evils of modernity, gradually apparent in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, have become all too clearly displayed as a real and embodied enemy. He attempts to join the Army, finally succeeding with the (fictitious) Royal Corps of Halberdiers, an old but not too fashionable regiment. He trains as an officer and is posted to various centres around Britain. One of the themes is recurring "flaps" or chaos – embarking and disembarking from ships and railway carriages that go nowhere. Crouchback meets the fire-eating Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook (probably based on Lieutenant General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, a college friend of Waugh's father-in-law whom Waugh knew somewhat from his club), and Apthorpe, a very eccentric fellow officer; in an episode of high farce, the latter two have a battle of wits and military discipline over an Edwardian thunder-box (portable toilet) which Crouchback observes, amused and detached. Before being sent on active service, he attempts to seduce his ex-wife Virginia, secure in the knowledge that the Catholic Church still regards her as his wife; she refuses him. He and Ben Ritchie-Hook share an adventure during the Battle of Dakar in 1940. Apthorpe dies in Freetown, supposedly of a tropical disease; when it is discovered that Guy gave him a bottle of whisky when visiting him in hospital (there is an implication that Apthorpe's disease, unknown to Guy, was really alcoholic liver failure), Guy is sent home, having blotted his copybook. Thus ends the first book. Crouchback eventually manages to find a place in a fledgling commando brigade training on a Scottish island under an old friend, Tommy Blackhouse, for whom Virginia left him. Another trainee is Ivor Claire, whom Crouchback regards as the flower of English chivalry. He learns to exploit the niceties of military ways of doing things with the assistance of Colonel "Jumbo" Trotter, an elderly Halberdier who knows all the strings to pull. Crouchback is posted to Egypt, headquarters for the Middle East theatre of operations. This involves him in the Battle of Crete, where he meets the disquieting Corporal-Major Ludovic. Crouchback acquits himself well on Crete, though chaos and muddle prevail. He, Ludovic and a few others achieve a perilous escape from the advancing Germans in a small boat. Ludovic wades ashore in Egypt, carrying Guy; the others in the boat have disappeared. Apparently a hero, Ludovic is made an officer. In Egypt the beautiful and well connected Mrs Stitch, a character who also figures in other Waugh novels, takes Guy under her wing. She also endeavours to protect Claire, who was evacuated from Crete even though his unit's orders were to fight to the last and then surrender as prisoners of war. She arranges for Crouchback to be sent the long way home to England, possibly to prevent him from compromising the cover story worked up to protect Claire from desertion charges. Guy finds himself once more in his club, asking around for a suitable job. Thus ends the second book. Crouchback spends 1941–1943 in Britain, mostly at desk jobs. He turns 40 and, with Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union and Britain's subsequent alliance with the Soviets, feels a sense of the war's futility. American soldiers swarm around London. Virginia has fallen on hard times and is reduced to selling her furs. She had been persuaded to accompany Trimmer, her former hairdresser, who has been set up as a war hero for media consumption. She becomes pregnant by him and searches futilely for an abortionist. Eventually she decides to look for a husband instead. Crouchback is selected for parachute training, preparatory to being sent into action one last time. The commanding officer at the training centre is Ludovic. In Crete, Ludovic had deserted from his unit, and in the process murdered two men, one on the boat. Although Crouchback was delirious at the time, Ludovic is afraid that he will be exposed if Guy meets him. Already a misfit as an officer, he becomes increasingly paranoid and isolated. Guy is injured during the parachute training, and finds himself stuck in an RAF medical unit, cut off from anyone he knows. He eventually contacts Jumbo Trotter to extract him and returns to live with his elderly bachelor uncle Peregrine Crouchback. His father having died and left an appreciable estate, Guy is now able to support himself comfortably. This attracts the attention of Virginia, who begins to visit him. Before Guy goes abroad, he and Virginia are reconciled and remarry (i.e., simply resuming their marriage, in the eyes of the Catholic Church). Virginia stays in London with Guy's Uncle Peregrine and has her baby there. Despite being incorrectly suspected of pro-Axis sympathies because of his time in pre-war Italy and of his Catholicism, Guy is posted to Yugoslavia where he is appalled by the partisans, befriends a small group of Jews and finds out that his former friend de Souza's loyalties are with the Communists rather than with Britain. While Guy is overseas, a German doodlebug hits Uncle Peregrine's flat and kills him and Virginia, but not the infant son of Virginia and Trimmer, Gervase, who is in the country with Guy's sister. On his late father's advice, Guy attempts individual acts of salvation, but these ultimately make matters worse for the recipients. The Yugoslavian Jews receive gifts from Jewish organisations in the USA, infuriating non-Jewish locals, although the gifts consist largely of warm clothing and food. Upon returning to England, Guy is told that some of his friends in Yugoslavia were shot as spies, largely because they had become so friendly with him. After the end of the war Guy meets the daughter of another old Roman Catholic family, Domenica Plessington, and marries her. In Waugh's first version of the novel's conclusion, Guy and his second wife produce further children who are to be disinherited by Trimmer's son. Waugh altered this ending to an uncompromisingly childless marriage in the revised text, after realising that some readers interpreted such a conclusion as hopeful. "No nippers for Guy," he clarified in a letter to Nancy Mitford. Even so, although Waugh died in 1966, in the Penguin 1974 reprint Guy still has two sons with Domenica Plessington. 

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On New Year's Eve, Detroit Police Department's Sergeant Jake Roenick, veteran cop Jasper O'Shea and secretary Iris Ferry are the only people on site at the soon-to-be-closed Precinct 13. Roenick, a former Marine, is deskbound and abusing alcohol and prescription drugs, blaming himself for a botched undercover operation eight months prior that resulted in the deaths of two members of his team. Psychiatrist Alexandra Sabian is treating a reluctant and dismissive Roenick at the station. Crime lord Marion Bishop is arrested when he kills an undercover police officer. Two Sheriff's Department Deputies are transferring Bishop with three other criminals: addict ex-lawyer Beck, petty crook Anna, and counterfeiter Smiley. When a raging snowstorm shuts down the roads, the transport bus is directed to the nearby Precinct 13. Masked gunmen cut off the Precinct's communication, attack the station, kill the Deputies and demand Bishop be handed over to them. The lawmen believe the attackers are Bishop's men. When they kill one of the attackers, they discover he is from a crew of undercover officers led by Captain Marcus Duvall of Precinct 21. Rather than trying to avenge the cop that Bishop murdered, they are actually Bishop's crooked partners in crime. Bishop balked when Duvall and his crew demanded a larger cut, so Duvall and his men (starting with the original dead cop) are trying to kill Bishop before he can testify about their involvement. Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, Roenick sets free and arms the prisoners to bolster the defense of the station. Roenick and Bishop forge an uneasy truce between cops and criminals, as both groups know they will be killed by Duvall to protect his secret. Their combined efforts repel several more attacks. Off- duty cop Capra, who has been partying and wants to make a move on Iris, returns to the station. Duvall's men shoot at him, but he makes it into the Precinct. Beck believes that Capra is a plant for Duvall, but Roenick vouches for him. Beck doesn't believe him and tries to attempt a mutiny, but Bishop sides with Roenick and forcefully reminds Beck that Roenick is in charge. With Capra's vehicle outside the front door, Beck and Smiley secretly plan to make a break for it. At the same time, the rest of the defenders are also planning to use the vehicle, with Anna and Dr. Sabian volunteering to be the driver and "gunman" in an effort to get help. Beck and Smiley happen to sneak out first, both getting killed by Duvall's men, inadvertently providing a distraction for Anna and Sabian to get away. Duvall had anticipated this and hidden Kahane, his second in command, in the back seat. Kahane kills Anna, then Duvall kills Sabian after she refuses to give intel on Precinct 13's defenders. With only five defenders left alive, Roenick and Bishop decide to take action instead of waiting for another attack. When someone inside unlocks the back door, they suspect Capra to be a mole for Duvall and put him in handcuffs. The storm eases just enough to allow Duvall to call in some corrupt SWAT officers by helicopter, who land on the roof of Precinct 13. The defenders set fire to the station to cover their escape and flee through a utilities tunnel underneath the building. Emerging from the tunnel, they find themselves surrounded by the corrupt policemen. The real Duvall insider is revealed to be O'Shea, and Duvall prepares to execute the rest. Bishop secretly plants a flash bang grenade on O'Shea, killing him. In the confusion Iris and Capra flee in Duvall's truck. When Kahane shoots out their tires and moves in for the kill, Iris manages to kill him with his own knife. Roenick and Bishop are chased into a small urban forest, where they work together to survive the final confrontation with Duvall and his remaining men. Duvall wounds both of them before Roenick finally manages to kill Duvall. Bishop, more mobile of the two, takes Roenick's gun and flees, with Roenick promising to personally arrest him in the future. When Iris arrives with police, fire and medical services, Roenick claims that only he and the dead cops are present - giving Bishop a head start. Roenick and Iris leave the forest as the sun rises. Iris mentions to Roenick that he was like a totally different person through the whole encounter. Roenick, smiling, replies, "Yeah? Well get used to it." 

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Upon returning home from work on his birthday, Steve (Gary Sweet), a middle class husband and father of two, finds the house dark and his family not home. He notices a chair, his television set, and a video tape obviously set out for his viewing. He turns the TV and VCR on, and begins to watch a tape made for him by his wife, Alexandra (Helen Buday). The first clip shows his wife and children wishing him a happy birthday, but after the kids leave the room, Alexandra begins a striptease, and it appears to be nothing more than a birthday gift. As it progresses, however, it becomes clear that the tape is designed to humiliate and torture Steve for marital problems that Alexandra has been stewing about for years. As part of her 'show', Alexandra feigns breast cancer, has sex with their neighbor, and tells Steve that neither she nor their two children are ever coming home. 

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In South-Central Los Angeles, a local gang, Street Thunder, steals a cache of assault rifles and pistols. At 3 am on a Saturday in Anderson, a crime- infested ghetto, a team of heavily-armed LAPD officers ambush and kill six members of the gang. Later, the gang's four warlords swear a blood oath of revenge against the police and the citizens of Los Angeles. During the day, three sequences of events occur parallel to one another: First, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, a newly promoted CHP officer, is assigned to take charge of the decommissioned Anderson police precinct during the last few hours before it is permanently closed. The station is manned by a skeleton staff composed of Sergeant Chaney and the station's two secretaries, Leigh and Julie. Across town, two of the Street Thunder warlords, along with two other gang members, drive around the neighborhood looking for people to kill. One of the warlords shoots and kills a little girl, Kathy, and the driver of an ice-cream truck. Kathy's father, Lawson, pursues and kills the warlord and the other gang members chase him into the Anderson precinct. In shock, Lawson is unable to communicate to Bishop or Chaney what has happened to him. Just before this, a prison bus commanded by Starker stops at the station to find medical help for one of three prisoners being transported to the state prison. The prisoners are Napoleon Wilson, Wells, and Caudell, who is sick. As the prisoners are put into cells, the telephone lines go dead, and when Starker prepares to put the prisoners back on the bus, the gang opens fire on the precinct, using weapons fitted with silencers. In seconds, they kill Chaney, the bus driver, Caudell, Starker, and the two officers accompanying Starker. Bishop unchains Wilson from Starker's body and puts Wilson and Wells back into the cells. When the gang members cut the station's electricity and begin a second wave of shooting, Bishop sends Leigh to release Wells and Wilson, and they help Bishop and Leigh repel an attempted invasion, though Julie is killed in the firefight. Meanwhile, the gang members remove all evidence of the skirmish to avoid attracting outside attention. Bishop hopes that someone has heard the police weapons firing, but the neighborhood is too sparsely populated for nearby residents to pinpoint the location of the noise. Wells is chosen to sneak out of the precinct through the sewer line and hot-wire a car, but is killed by a gang member hiding in the back seat. However, two police officers responding to reports of gunfire find the dead body of a telephone repairman hanging from a pole near the police station and call for backup. As the gang rallies for an all-out final assault, Wilson, Leigh, and Bishop retreat to the basement, taking the still-catatonic Lawson with them. The gang then storms the building and rushes the survivors, who protect themselves with a large, durable sign. Bishop shoots a tank full of acetylene gas, which explodes and kills all the gang members in the basement. The remainder of the gang flees as more police support arrives to secure the station. Venturing down into the basement, the police officers find dozens of dead and badly-burned gang members strewn about the hallway; the only survivors are Bishop, Leigh, Wilson, and Lawson. Lawson is wheeled out on a stretcher, while Leigh refuses medical help for the gunshot wound in her arm and walks off. An officer tries to cuff Wilson, but Bishop angrily stops him and asks Wilson to walk out of the station with him. 

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Two rebellious children, Lindsey and Kevin Kingston (Aleisha Allen and Philip Daniel Bolden), sabotage the relationships of their divorced mother, determined to keep her single until their parents reconcile. Nick Persons (Ice Cube), a bachelor who hates children, purchases a brand new 2004 Lincoln Navigator and boasts with his beloved bobblehead doll of Satchel Paige, who comes to life at its own will – though only Nick can hear him. When he reaches his sports shop, he witnesses the woman of his dreams, Suzanne Kingston (Nia Long). On his way to talk to her, he is disgusted to find she has two kids, who turn out to be Lindsey and Kevin. Later that night, Nick runs into Suzanne on his way home, asking for ride because her car has broken down. He agrees to take her home, and once there, agrees to transport her wherever she needs to go. On New Year's Eve, he brings her to the local airport to go to Vancouver for a business meeting, but her former husband Frank calls to say he is sick and cannot bring the children to the airport, leaving her to put her trust in Nick. Once at her house, he meets Kevin and Lindsey, who immediately dislike him. They go to the airport, where Kevin accidentally damages Nick's car door. Inside the airport, Kevin learns that corkscrews, a gift he got from Nick, are illegal to bring on planes. Unable to get to a trashcan, he slips the item in Nick's jacket pocket, which leads to Nick being tackled by security. They decide to take a train, but the two kids jump off to collect a toy just as Nick boards, forcing him to jump off and land unsafely, losing their luggage, and they reluctantly drive. Believing Nick is only their mother's friend, the kids are tamed but still misbehave and show Nick no respect. At a truck stop, the two learn from one of Nick's friends, Marty (Jay Mohr), on his cellphone that he not only hates them, but also lied about not having feelings for their mother. Kevin fakes an asthma attack to lock Nick out of his car. Lindsey then tries to drive the car away but fails because of not knowing how to drive forcing Nick to chase after them and then tries to stop the kids by trying to get in from the SUV’s rooftop. Lindsey drives the car in a butcher statue causing the axe to injure Nick between his legs. Later, Lindsey signals to truck driver Al Buck (M.C. Gainey) that they have been kidnapped causing Nick to accidentally drive his car into the woods and down a mountain, resulting in heavy damage to the car, much to his horror and dismay, and ultimately the kids run away to visit their father in a train, with Nick chasing after them on a horse but ultimately falling off. Once they arrive at their father's house, they discover that he has repeatedly lied about being sick, among other excuses to continue avoiding spending time with them; he actually abandoned them for his mistress who had his daughter. Feeling hurt and betrayed, they begin warming up to Nick, as he does with them. Nick tells them his father also abandoned him and the three begin to become friends. Back on the road, Kevin vomits on the car's windshield and then they pull into a rest area to clean out the car. While Kevin and Nick feed a deer some cookies, Lindsey accidentally scares it with a camera flash, causing the deer to attack Nick, resulting in him losing his car keys. Because of this, Nick tries to hotwire the car using his lighter, but he accidentally causes the lighter to tip over and set the inside of the car on fire, and explodes. With the car now a heap of scrap metal, the trio tries to hitch a ride from Al Buck, but he leaves Nick behind and drives off, still thinking Nick is a kidnapper. Nick hitches a ride from the driver of a billboard truck. In Al's truck, the kids physically attack him in the van, leading to a chase that ends in Vancouver, where Nick fights Al. During the fight, Kevin has an asthma attack and collapses. Nick rushes to his side and revives him. Witnessing the event, Suzanne believes trusting Nick was a mistake. After encouragement from Satchel, Nick goes to Suzanne's hotel to say goodbye to her and the kids. After Suzanne realizes how much Nick and the kids have grown to care for each other, Suzanne tells Nick that he is the one for her, and they kiss on New Year's Eve. 

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The year is 1918, and Max Rothman (John Cusack), a fictional Munich art dealer, is a veteran of the Third Battle of Ypres, where he lost his right arm during the latter stages of World War I, effectively ending his career as a painter. He returns to Germany and opens a modern art gallery. He is married to Nina (Molly Parker), but also has a mistress, Liselore von Peltz (Leelee Sobieski). Through a chance encounter, Rothman is approached by a young Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor), a war veteran as well, disgruntled over Germany's loss during the conflict and the country's humiliation by the signing of the Versailles Treaty; Hitler wishes to have his artwork drawings displayed. Rothman comes to believe that Hitler has talent, but has failed to tap his inner potential to create great art. While he is aware of Hitler's anti-semitism, Rothman still encourages him to delve deeper in his art. Rothman feels sorry for Hitler, who had nothing to come home to after the war. Despite his overall doubts about Hitler, Rothman agrees to take some of his paintings under a contractual basis. Meanwhile, Hitler meets Captain Karl Mayr (Ulrich Thomsen), a Reichswehr officer, who encourages him to go into politics and make a career out of anti-semitic propaganda. During a brief conversation in an army barracks, Mayr also offers to financially support him by having the army pay for his expenses, further enticing Hitler to join his national socialist movement, the German Workers' Party. Later, Rothman begins to question Hitler's motives regarding his racial views. In an exchange of words, Hitler denies being anti-semitic and replies that on the contrary, he grudgingly admires the Jews and firmly believes the secret to their elite status in society is in the purity of their blood. He goes on to state that the German people would be better off if they did not integrate themselves with different races. Seeing Hitler's architectural sketches, with their appeal to a romanticized national greatness, Rothman realizes this is where Hitler's talent lies, and that it would be far less dangerous if confined to art galleries. Hitler is thrilled by Rothman's enthusiasm, not understanding it is partly motivated by fear of what he might become. Rothman and Hitler have arranged to meet that evening to discuss Hitler's future projects, and after making a violently anti-semitic speech to a group of supporters at a rally—with Mayr's backing—Hitler goes to a cafe to discuss a series of new militaristic drawings with Rothman. As Rothman approaches the cafe for his interview with Hitler, he is savagely beaten by a group of anti-semites, who had attended Hitler's rally and been incited into the racial attack on Rothman by Hitler's words. As Rothman lies dying, an angry Hitler leaves the cafe, believing that Rothman has stood him up. 

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In Pushkin's poem, an old man and woman have been living poorly for many years. They have a small hut, and every day the man goes out to fish. One day, he throws in his net and pulls out seaweed two times in succession, but on the third time he pulls out a golden fish. The fish pleads for its life, promising any wish in return. However, the old man is scared by the fact that a fish can speak; he says he does not want anything, and lets the fish go. When he returns and tells his wife about the golden fish, she gets angry and tells her husband to go ask the fish for a new trough, as theirs is broken, and the fish happily grants this small request. The next day, the wife asks for a new house, and the fish grants this also. Then, in succession, the wife asks for a palace, to become a noble lady, to become the ruler of her province, to become the tsarina, and finally to become the Ruler of the Sea and to subjugate the golden fish completely to her boundless will. As the man goes to ask for each item, the sea becomes more and more stormy, until the last request, where the man can hardly hear himself think. When he asks that his wife be made the Ruler of the Sea, the fish cures her greed by putting everything back to the way it was before, including the broken trough. 

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Groove tells the story of an all-night rave. The film is broken up into segments by which DJ is spinning and features real-life DJs Forest Green, WishFM, Polywog, and Digweed. It follows David Turner (Hamish Linklater), who becomes a reluctant raver when his brother Colin (Denny Kirkwood) drags him to the rave. 

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The film revolves around Nita (played by Supriya Choudhury), a beautiful young girl who lives with her family, refugees from East Pakistan, in the suburbs of Calcutta. Nita is a self-sacrificing person who is constantly exploited by everyone around her, even her own family, who take her goodness for granted. Her elder brother Shankar (played by Anil Chatterjee) does not care for the family as he wants to be a singer, so she needs to take the burden. Her life is ridden with personal tragedy: she loses first her fiancé Sanat, then her job and finally her health by contracting tuberculosis. Her mostly absent would-be singer brother is the only person who cares about her in the end. At the end of the film, she screams out her agony, throwing herself into her brother's arms. She utters her last words: "Brother, I want to survive (দাদা, আমি বাঁচতে চাই।)." 

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In Pamplona, Spain in 1976, the Basque people are fighting against the Spanish government for their rights to autonomy. ETA leader Jaime Miro, along with friends Ricardo Mellado and Felix Carpio, escape from prison, but at the expense of many civilian lives during a sabotaged bull-running exhibit that was used as a distraction from the police. Following the event, the Prime Minister assigns Colonel Ramón Acoca (head of the anti-ETA group GOE) to hunt down Jaime Miró; Acoca's wife and unborn child were killed in a Basque demonstration assisted by ETA and the Church, so when he suspects Jaime hiding in a convent, he decides to raid it by force despite the implications of it. The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance just outside Ávila, where women of all backgrounds choose to live a life of solitude, worship, and fasting, is run by Reverend Mother Betina. When the GOE raid the convent and proceed to assault and rape the sisters, four sisters manage to escape; the eldest nun, Teresa, is given the task to take the convent's only valuable asset, a cross made of gold, to the nearest convent where it will be safe. The four nuns have different back stories. The latest member of the convent, Sister Lucia, is actually Lucia Carmine, the wealthy daughter of a Mafia Don who went to the convent as a means of escape after she murdered three men involved in her father's arrest, and plans to lay low for a few months before escaping to Switzerland to retrieve her father's offshore money. Sister Graciella is the daughter of a bitter woman who loathes her daughter because she is a reminder of the man who left her, as well as the fact that Graceilla "stole" her beauty, and beat her daughter unconscious when she caught her having sex with her current lover; Graciella found peace with God, and voluntarily went to the convent. Sister Megan was abandoned and was never claimed for adoption and opted to join the convent instead of becoming a maid, but longs to know who her real family is. And Sister Teresa was a religious person growing up until her younger, more beautiful sister Monique stole her fiancé, and she went against God until she decided to stay in a convent when her fiancé begged for her forgiveness and said he was coming back for her. Lucia is determined to make it to the Swiss border without drawing suspicion, and plots to steal the golden cross, pawn it, and use the money to go to Switzerland. They are tricked by a man named Carrillo who poses as a priest, but they manage to subdue him before he rapes Graciella. They change out of their convent clothes to seem inconspicuous while travelling. However, they run into Jaime and his men, along with Jaime's girlfriend Amparo. Afraid that the sisters will give away their location, they decide to take them to their hideout. Colonel Acoca has figured out that four of the nuns are missing and is convinced that Jaime Miró escaped before the soldiers got there. The Prime Minister doubts that he was there in the first place and believes that Acoca is starting to get out of control, but continues to have the Colonel search for both Miró and the missing nuns, in order to avoid public's suspicion and critics about the brutality and raid to the convent done by his men for no obvious reason. They get a tip from Carrillo, whom they suspect due to the robes left in the store that he was subdued in. Meanwhile, Sister Teresa, nervous about leaving the convent after years of solitude, has become paranoid of everyone, including the men escorting her to the ETA hideout. She sees a father pushing a baby stroller, and is anxious that is her fiancé and his child with his sister, but she tries to remind herself that the infant is supposed to be an adult by now. Meanwhile, Ellen Scott, a CEO of Scott Industries, has incurable cancer. She once was a middle-class worker who saved the life of Milo Scott, the younger brother of Byron Scott, the then-CEO of the company. They married and Ellen went to live in New York, where she saw how Byron mistreated Milo and how greedy and manipulative upper-class people were, turning her into a bitter woman whose only consolation was that Byron would eventually give the company to Milo. However, Byron and his wife produced a daughter named Patricia, and Milo and Ellen feared that Byron would name her the heiress of the company. During a business trip to Spain, the private jet they are travelling in crashes, killing everyone except Milo, Ellen, and Patricia. Ellen convinces Milo that if they take Patricia, they will simply raise her before she comes of age and inherits everything and leave them with nothing, and they abandon her at a farm and claim that they are the only survivors. However, during the reading of Byron's will, it is revealed that Byron's personal assets go to Patricia, but Milo will inherit the company, leaving them both guilty over abandoning Patricia, since they cannot claim her now and face suspicions that they attempted to abandon her. Milo dies of guilt a year later, leaving Ellen to inherit it. She hires her chief of security, former detective Alan Tucker, to search for a baby abandoned in Avila, Spain, not telling him why. It is implied that the baby is Sister Megan. Back in Spain, Colonel Acoca informs his colleagues that the nuns are with Jaime Miró, saying one of Jaime's friends are actually his informants. Sister Teresa is slowly going insane, believing that the terrorists were hired by Raoul to kidnap her and take her back. While everyone is sleeping, she leave the golden cross with Lucia and makes her way to Colonel Acoca's camp, informing them of their location, begging them not to let her go to her former fiancé. They raid the camp, and Jaime agrees to split the group to avoid capture - Ricardo Mellado with Sister Graciela, Rubio Arzano with Sister Lucia, and Jaime Miró, Felix Carpio, and Amparo with Sister Megan. Acoca interrogates Sister Teresa for their location, but her madness has taken over and proves to be of no use, and he has his men rape her until she speaks. She decides that she has been abandoned by God, but evil still exists and steals a pistol to shoot a few of them before she is shot dead. Meanwhile, Alan Tucker is in Ávila tracking the baby. He visits the priest involved with the orphanage, the hospital, and the orphanage itself and manages to connect that the baby is in fact Patricia Scott, and that Ellen needs to find her as an heiress to the company. He decides to blackmail Ellen, hoping to become her business partner. Lucia is entertained with Rubio, who believes that she has been in the convent for ten years and does not know what the current state of the world is. She thinks she is falling for him, but is determined to get her money. At the same time, Jaime is reflecting upon his life as a terrorist. His family sought refuge in a Church from the Spaniards, but everyone but him died, and he sought revenge and at the same time did not like the Church, which was why he was reluctant to take the sisters. He and Megan start to become friends, which Amparo is not pleased about. As the group stops at a hotel for the night, the room clerk calls the police, but they manage to escape. Rubio asks Lucia to say a prayer and shares the only prayer she knows. For the first time in her life, Lucia understands the prayer and what it means to her. While taking a bath in a stream, Lucia almost drowns, and Rubio saves her, and they eventually have sex. Rubio wishes to marry her, and Lucia finds herself wishing she could, but she is still determined to go to Switzerland. They arrive at a town, and Lucia successfully haggles for a passport and money from a pawn shop. While having dinner, Rubio is stabbed when he defends a snide comment someone makes about Lucia. They run to a church, where Lucia tries her best to take care of him, but is forced to go to a hospital to take care of him. They are both arrested because the authorities recognize Rubio as a terrorist and Lucia as a criminal from Italy. Sister Graciela and Ricardo's trip is quiet as Graciela will not talk to Ricardo despite his best efforts. Although he is exasperated with her cold shoulder, he is reluctantly starting to fall for her. It isn't until she is almost attacked by a wild wolf in a cave that she begins to speak to him. She doesn't want to love him because of her past of falling for another man, but falls for him anyway, and they plan to marry. Alan Tucker goes to the orphanage to find more information about Megan/Patricia, but comes to a dead end when the owner of the orphanage tells him that the date Megan arrived does not coincide with the date Patricia should have died, and continues the assignment trying to locate Megan. It is revealed that Ellen paid the owner to lie and change the dates. Amparo is growing angry with Jaime and Megan's relationship. They hide out at a bullfight, where Megan impresses Jaime with her knowledge of the subject. They discover that Rubio and Lucia were arrested, leaving Megan shocked to find out about Lucia's past, as well as Sister Teresa's death. She is also saddened to hear about Sister Teresa's death. Megan grows sympathetic to his ideals even though she believes that violence is wrong. Jaime holds up a bank to get money to continue traveling, and Acoca nearly catches him if it weren't for Megan, and he suspects Felix of betraying him. Amparo tells him that one of their friends wants them to meet in the town square, and when he leaves, Megan overhears her calling Acoca, and saves him from getting caught by pretending to be an angry wife looking for her husband. When he confronts Ampara, she tells him that she is sick of the bloodshed and how they are hurting the Basque people as well, and they keep her with the group so as not to escape. Acoca discovers that Jaime escaped, and tricks him to meeting up in a convent. However, after reuniting with Graciella and Ricardo, he realized that it is a trap and they head to the countryside. Jaime tricks Amparo by forcing her to drink with powder in it, but it is only sleeping pills and they leave while she is asleep. He persuades Megan to wait in France with his aunt until he is done fighting so they can marry, and she talks to Graciella about leaving the convent. The next morning, they go into a Basque town to find Acoca waiting for them, as he was tipped off by Amparo when she woke up. Surrounded by Basque people, Acoca cannot kill Jaime and leaves, knowing that he will surely be killed by the people who hired him for failing his job. Alan finds Megan, telling her that Ellen has been looking for her. She promises to return to Jaime soon, and Alan realizes that she is Patricia, and Ellen had a hand at hiding the evidence. During their wedding, Graciella stops and decides to return to the convent. Jaime's men get Rubio and Lucia out of prison by pretending be Acoca's men. Rubio and Lucia are reunited, and Lucia goes to Switzerland to collect thirteen million dollars. Megan knows the truth about her past because of Ellen, but forgives her and is eventually adopted by her. Megan learns how to run the company and inherits it after Ellen dies. Three years later, Jaime has been caught and sentenced to death. She tries to save him with good lawyers and talking to the Prime Minister, but nothing happens. The execution seems to have gone as planned, but when she opens the body bag sent to her, Jaime is in it, still alive, and it is implied that she paid the men responsible for the execution to leave the country and become wealthy men. Lucia and Rubio have settled for a simple life in the French countryside, having twin children. Sister Graciella returns to the convent, where she returns the golden cross and continues life as it was before. 

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Jennifer Parker, a beautiful, inexperienced, newly sworn in Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York, inadvertently participates in a plot by Michael Moretti, the rising star of one of the most powerful organized crime families in America, to escape a trial. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Di Silva, believing that Jennifer is truly responsible, fires her and vows to destroy her for her part in the fiasco with Moretti. Di Silva initiates disbarment procedures against Jennifer, and young lawyer Adam Warner is assigned to investigate Jennifer. Adam immediately realizes that she is not guilty at all, and falls for her. With Adam's help Jennifer begins to rise again; meanwhile Moretti, inspired by her determination to succeed, follows her career from a distance. Adam, despite being married and groomed for the United States Senate, cannot help falling in love with Jennifer. When he tells her that his wife Mary Beth has asked for a divorce, Jennifer meets with her. Being so close to the Senate election, the two women decide it is best for Adam to wait until after the election. But Mary Beth sleeps with Adam one last time, in the process tricking him into impregnating her. Adam learns that his wife is pregnant, wins the election and Jennifer ends their affair. Jennifer, having previously discovered that she too is pregnant and not wanting to be hurt by Adam, accepts but does not reveal to him that she is carrying his child. Jennifer gives birth and names her son Joshua Adam Parker. Only her assistant Ken Bailey knows of Joshua's existence. Jennifer returns to her practice and soon makes headlines as a successful lawyer. Meanwhile, Moretti constantly tries to spark friendship with Jennifer, which she rebuffs at every attempt, reminding him of his earlier trick that was devastating to her early career. Nevertheless, when her son is kidnapped by a criminal Jennifer is defending, she, in desperation, turns to Moretti for help. After helping her, he seduces her and Jennifer eventually becomes the Family consigliere. Joshua dies following a water skiing accident. Jennifer and Moretti are soon being hunted down by the government; he shoots her, wrongly thinking she has betrayed him, and is killed himself in an FBI raid of his house. Adam is able to use his position to save Jennifer. Soon Jennifer watches on television as Adam is sworn in as President of the United States. Jennifer returns to her home town and a small law practice, with everyone she loved taken from her and all joy and happiness gone from her life.Rage Of Angels ; The Book 

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Actor Khwaja Nader in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 2006. The film takes place during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which is especially repressive for women, who must wear burqas to cover themselves and are banned from working outside the home. This causes difficulty for a family consisting of only an unnamed young girl, her mother, and her grandmother, whose male relatives were killed in battle during the Soviet invasion and subsequent civil wars. The mother loses her hospital job when the Taliban cuts off funding, and cannot find other work. Desperate, the mother and grandmother decide to have the young girl disguise herself as a boy so that she can get a job. To persuade the girl to accept the plan, the grandmother tells her an Afghan fable about a boy who became a girl when he went under a rainbow. The girl reluctantly agrees, despite being afraid that the Taliban will kill her if they discover her masquerade. They cut her hair, and the girl plants a lock of it in a flowerpot. The only other people who know of the ruse are the milk vendor, who gives her a job because he was a friend of her deceased father, and a local boy named Espandi who sees through her disguise. It is Espandi who renames the girl Osama. The masquerade becomes more difficult when the Taliban draft all the local boys into their madrasa, a religious and military training school for boys. They are taught how to fight and conduct wudu, ritual ablutions, including one for when they experience a nocturnal emission or come in contact with their wife when they grow older. Osama attempts to avoid joining the ablution session, and the schoolmaster grows suspicious of her. She realises that she will inevitably be found out. Several of the boys begin to pick on her. Espandi is able to protect her at first, but her secret is discovered when she begins to menstruate. Osama is arrested and put on trial along with two other people. The others are condemned and put to death, but as Osama is destitute and helpless, her life is spared; she is instead given in marriage to a much older man. He already has three wives, all of whom hate him and say he has destroyed their lives. The wives take pity on Osama, but are powerless to help her. The husband shows her the padlocks he uses on his wives' rooms, reserving the largest for her. The film ends with the new husband conducting an ablution in an outdoor bath, which the boys were earlier taught to conduct after coming in contact with their wives. 

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The episode is a parody of the VH1 biography series Behind the Music and shares its narrator, Jim Forbes. It begins with the Simpson family history and how they got into show business: believing that families depicted in the numerous TV shows they watch together bare no resemblance to their comparative dysfunctionalism, Homer writes and directs an inadequate video "pilot" that fails to attract the attention of the major networks except for Fox, as its president happens to be Marge's hairdresser. After much fine-tuning and on-set mishaps produce many of the show's running gags, The Simpsons' resounding ratings and merchandising success makes the family extraordinarily wealthy; having moved out of their house on Evergreen Terrace to live in MC Hammer's former mansion, "Hammertime" (renamed "Homertime"), they expand their scope to include a series of Grammy-winning, "mega-platinum" novelty albums. Problems begin to arise as the Simpsons' fame continues: they become reckless spendthrifts, alternating between buying their colleagues extravagant gifts and paying them to perform embarrassing acts for their amusement. After a funny stunt (the plummet into Springfield Gorge from "Bart the Daredevil") causes him injury, Homer becomes addicted to prescription painkillers; Marge blows much of the family's fortune on licensing her likeness for use on diaphragms, and Bart goes into rehab after attacking flight attendants, being temporarily replaced on the show by Richie Rich. Following a tip from Apu, the IRS discovers that the Simpsons are evading tax payments and repossess Homertime. As tensions mount in the family, the show's writing and production team resort to gimmicky, nonsensical plots and shameless guest star appearances to maintain ratings. Finally, while performing with Jimmy Carter at the Iowa State Fair, the family gets into a big dispute and splits up. Fox puts the show on hiatus since none of the Simpsons will talk to each other. The members pursue independent endeavors: Homer follows a career as a hammy character actor in stage productions such as Rent II: Condo Fever; Bart replaces Lorenzo Lamas as the star of the syndicated action show Renegade; Marge creates a nightclub act performing Bob Marley's song "I Shot the Sheriff"; and Lisa writes Where Are My Residuals?, a tell-all book about her negative experiences from working on the show, such as Homer's spiking of her cereal with anti-growth hormones. Bringing the family back together seems impossible, until Dr. Hibbert tasks his old fraternity brother, country singer Willie Nelson, with reuniting them. Nelson puts on a phony awards show in order to reconcile the family, who hug and forgive each other for their past wrongs. They look with hope to the many years of episodes of The Simpsons to come... or not. The episode ends with an epilogue, in which Forbes states, "...the future looks brighter than ever for this northern Kentucky family". Following the epilogue, the Simpson family is shown in a video editing room, viewing a scene from an upcoming episode from the next season, which shows the family talking about winning a trip to Delaware. Seemingly in response to the stilted and unfunny quality of the proceedings, Homer quietly assures the editor that the next season will be the last. The final scene shows a mock teaser for an "upcoming episode" of Behind the Laughter about Huckleberry Hound, in which he reveals that he is gay. 

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An evil vampire duke seeks to kill and collect the blood of a royal family of European vampires in order to become all powerful. The last surviving member of the family, Prince Kazaf, flees to Hong Kong with his servant Prada. There, they are introduced by estate agent Momoko to live in an abandoned church. Vampire hunter Reeve is depressed after his partner Lila is killed by vampires. He decides to train Lila's younger sister, Gypsy, to inherit her sister's duty and fight the vampire duke. However, Reeve's own sister, Helen, sees Gypsy as a rival. At the same time, Kazaf meets Helen and falls in love with her, after which he intends to lead the life of a human being, but he is tracked down by the duke. Helen helps Kazaf and lets him hide in her home, where they are later discovered by Gypsy. Meanwhile, Reeve falls into the duke's trap while hunting vampires. Helen and Gypsy team up to save him. 

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Set in the 1950s, School Ties tells a story of David Greene (Brendan Fraser), a working-class Jewish teenager from Scranton, Pennsylvania who is given a football scholarship to an exclusive Massachusetts prep school for his senior year due to his grades and ability to play football. Upon his arrival, he meets his teammates Rip Van Kelt (Randall Batinkoff), Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon), Jack Connors (Cole Hauser), and his roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell) who are the big men on campus (the most well known and popular students) from well-to-do families and learns of the school's cherished honor code system. Soon learning that his new friends are prejudiced against Jews, he suppresses his background. David becomes the team hero and wins the attentions of beautiful débutante Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane), whom Dillon claims is his girlfriend. In the afterglow of a victory over the school's chief rival St. Luke's, Dillon inadvertently discovers that David is Jewish. Out of jealousy, Dillon makes this widely known, causing Sally and his teammates to turn against David. Soon after, he finds a sign above his bed bearing a swastika and the words "Go home Jew". David is constantly harassed by his classmates, led by Richard "McGoo" Collins (Anthony Rapp) and his bodyguard-like roommate Chesty Smith (Ben Affleck). Only Reece and another unnamed student remain loyal to Greene. Overwhelmed by pressure from his prestigious family, Dillon uses a crib sheet to cheat in an important history exam. David and Van Kelt each spot him doing so, but remain silent. After the exam, Dillon gets pushed while leaving class and drops the sheet on the floor after the test. When the teacher, Mr. Geirasch (Michael Higgins), discovers it, he informs the class that he will fail all of them if the cheater does not confess. He leaves the task of finding the cheater up to the students, led by Van Kelt, the head prefect. When David confronts Dillon and threatens to turn him in if he does not confess, Dillon tells him about his pressure, apologises for his actions against him and unsuccessfully attempts to buy David's silence with money. Just when David is about to reveal Dillon to the other students, Dillon accuses David. They fight until Van Kelt breaks it up and tells them to leave and leave it to the rest of the class to decide who's telling the truth. Both agree to do so. The majority of the class blame David out of anti-Semitic prejudice, while Reece, the unnamed student, and Connors, going against his own self-professed anti-Semitism, argue that it is unlike David to cheat or be dishonest. Despite this, the class votes that David is guilty, prompting Van Kelt to tell him to report to the elitist headmaster, Dr. Bartram (Peter Donat), to confess to cheating. David goes to Bartram's office and says that he was the cheater. Unbeknownst to him, Van Kelt has already told the headmaster that the real offender was Dillon. Bartram tells David and Van Kelt that they should have reported the offense, but absolves them. Dillon is expelled. As David leaves the headmaster's office, he sees Dillon leaving the school. Dillon says that he will be accepted to Harvard anyway and that years later everybody will have forgotten about his cheating at school, while David will still just be a Jew. "And you'll still be a prick," David replies, and walks away. 

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Following the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, a unit of the Wehrmacht under the command of Capt. Klaus Woermann occupies an uninhabited citadel in Romania to control the Dinu Mountain Pass. Two soldiers attempt to loot a metallic icon within the keep but accidentally unleash a spectral entity, which kills them. The being, known as Radu Molasar, proceeds to kill several more soldiers in the following days and begins to take corporeal form. A detachment of Einsatzkommandos under the command of the sadistic SD Sturmbannführer Eric Kaempffer arrives to deal with what is thought to be partisan activity, executing villagers as collective punishment. At the instigation of the local priest, the Germans retrieve an ailing Jewish historian, Prof. Theodore Cuza, from a concentration camp. He deciphers a mysterious message emblazoned on a wall of the citadel before Molasar saves the professor's daughter, Eva, from sexual assault by two Einsatzkommandos and cures Cuza of his debilitating scleroderma by touch. The professor becomes indebted to the entity who demands that Cuza remove a talisman from the keep so that Molasar can escape its confines. Having remotely sensed Molasar's presence, a mysterious stranger named Glaeken arrives, seducing Eva and incurring the professor's ire. The malign power of Molasar begins to affect the villagers, seemingly driving them mad. After an unsuccessful attempt by the professor to have the stranger stopped, Kaempffer and Woermann clash over the former's sadistic crimes; Woermann furiously denounces the Nazis, claiming that the monster hunting them is a reflection of their evil. He is murdered by Kaempffer who flees the scene only to find his men have been slaughtered by Molasar. Kaempffer is killed as Cuza goes to remove the talisman from the keep. When Eva attempts to prevent him from doing so, Cuza refuses Molasar's command to kill her. In response, Molasar returns Cuza to his diseased state. Glaeken arrives and confronts Molasar. After their battle, the latter is weakened and banished back into the innermost recesses of the keep. Glaeken is transformed in a storm of light and seals the aperture that freed Molasar, condemning the entity within once more. The villagers, freed from Molasar's influence, escort Eva and Cuza away. 

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Nighttime radio disc-jockey Andie is in a funk after a short relationship with a fellow D.J. One night, she discovers a record in her library by Simon Locke, a former lover, whom she broke up with five years earlier. After starting the track from the album "Nightsong" during her shift, Simon shows up at the station. She confronts him angrily about how he walked out on her and never came back. She then turns and he's gone. When leaving the station after work, a motorcycle almost hits her but Simon saves her in time. He then follows her and they begin rehashing their relationship. At a coffee shop, Simon and Andie discuss their past and she questions why he hasn't produced music since they broke up. They discuss the good and bad times of their relationship, and she suddenly realizes that she doesn't want to get played by Simon so she leaves the cafe. At home, she can't seem to get away from "Nightsong" as she finds it playing on her stereo. She then discovers Simon and talks to him again but this time she asks him about his songs, which detailed their relationship. He attempts to seduce her but then stops and says that they can't have their relationship back and while she's angry he tries to explain why they can't get back together. Simon takes Andie toward the ocean on a back road and he tells her that maybe he was running from her and success the whole time. He careens off onto a dirt road and they stop to get out near the edge of a cliff. He takes her down the hillside and tells her how after she played his song he decided to come back to explain to her what happened. Then, he pulls back some brush to reveal a wrecked motorcycle and a skeleton. It is revealed that Simon had died in a motorcycle accident years earlier. Later, while she is at work she gets a call requesting "Nightsong" to be played. She tags the song with "from Andrea to Simon with love." 

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One morning in the near future, a group of assorted stereotypes awake in a strange town with no memory of who they are or where they came from. Their only clues come from the assorted labels that hold their names (Wade's name badge and Sam's underwear) and a mysteriously creepy voice issuing from their televisions. Over the course of the season, they endure many trials including an unusual reality show kitchen task, a murder mystery among their group, a secret affair and of course their own strange personalities before they learn the horrifying truth behind the unusual events of the Strangerhood. 

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Pharaoh begins with one of the more memorable openingsBolesław Prus, Pharaoh, p. 12. in a novel — an opening written in the style of an ancient chronicle: Pharaoh combines features of several literary genres: the historical novel, the political novel, the Bildungsroman, the utopian novel, the sensation novel.Zygmunt Szweykowski, Twórczość Bolesława Prusa, pp. 327–47. It also comprises a number of interbraided strands — including the plot line, Egypt's cycle of seasons, the country's geography and monuments, and ancient Egyptian practices (e.g. mummification rituals and techniques) — each of which rises to prominence at appropriate moments. Much as in an ancient Greek tragedy, the fate of the novel's protagonist, the future "Ramses XIII,"Historically, there were only eleven Ramesside pharaohs. is known from the beginning. Prus closes his introduction with the statement that the narrative "relates to the eleventh century before Christ, when the Twentieth Dynasty fell and when, after the demise of the Son of the Sun the eternally living Ramses XIII, the throne was seized by, and the uraeus came to adorn the brow of, the eternally living Son of the Sun Sem-amen-Herhor, High Priest of Amon."Bolesław Prus, Pharaoh, p. 11. What the novel will subsequently reveal is the elements that lead to this denouement—the character traits of the principals, the social forces in play. Ancient Egypt at the end of its New Kingdom period is experiencing adversities. The deserts are eroding Egypt's arable land. The country's population has declined from eight to six million. Foreign peoples are entering Egypt in ever-growing numbers, undermining its unity. The chasm between the peasants and craftsmen on one hand, and the ruling classes on the other, is growing, exacerbated by the ruling elites' fondness for luxury and idleness. The country is becoming ever more deeply indebted to Phoenician merchants, as imported goods destroy native industries. The Egyptian priesthood, backbone of the bureaucracy and virtual monopolists of knowledge, have grown immensely wealthy at the expense of the pharaoh and the country. At the same time, Egypt is facing prospective peril at the hands of rising powers to the north — Assyria and Persia. Ramses II ("the Great") at the Battle of Kadesh. (Bas relief at Abu Simbel.) The 22-year-old Egyptian crown prince and viceroy Ramses, having made a careful study of his country and of the challenges that it faces, evolves a strategy that he hopes will arrest the decline of his own political power and of Egypt's internal viability and international standing. Ramses plans to win over or subordinate the priesthood, especially the High Priest of Amon, Herhor; obtain for the country's use the treasures that lie stored in the Labyrinth; and, emulating Ramses the Great's military exploits, wage war on Assyria. Ramses proves himself a brilliant military commander in a victorious lightning war against the invading Libyans. On succeeding to the throne, he encounters the adamant opposition of the priestly hierarchy to his planned reforms. The Egyptian populace is instinctively drawn to Ramses, but he must still win over or crush the priesthood and their adherents. In the course of the political intrigue, Ramses' private life becomes hostage to the conflicting interests of the Phoenicians and the Egyptian high priests. Ramses' ultimate downfall is caused by his underestimation of his opponents and by his impatience with priestly obscurantism. Along with the chaff of the priests' myths and rituals, he has inadvertently discarded a crucial piece of scientific knowledge. Ramses is succeeded to the throne by his arch-enemy Herhor, who paradoxically ends up raising treasure from the Labyrinth to finance the very social reforms that had been planned by Ramses, and whose implementation Herhor and his allies had blocked. But it is too late to arrest the decline of the Egyptian polity and to avert the eventual fall of the Egyptian civilization. The novel closes with a poetic epilogue that reflects Prus' own path through life.Christopher Kasparek, "Prus' Pharaoh and Curtin's Translation", p. 128. The priest Pentuer, who had declined to betray the priesthood and aid Ramses' campaign to reform the Egyptian polity, mourns Ramses, who like the teenage Prus had risked all to save his country. As Pentuer and his mentor, the sage priest Menes, listen to the song of a mendicant priest, Pentuer says: 

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A voice-over by Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson (Jack Hawkins), a British Merchant Navy officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, declares: > This is a story of the Battle of the Atlantic, the story of an ocean, two > ships, and a handful of men. The men are the heroes; the heroines are the > ships. The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more > cruel... In late 1939, just as war breaks out, Ericson is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built intended for convoy escort duties. His sub-lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby, are both newly commissioned and without experience at sea. The new first lieutenant, James Bennett (Stanley Baker), is an abusive martinet. Despite these initial disadvantages, the ship's company gains hard experience and becomes an effective fighting unit. At first their worst enemy is the weather, since German submarines lack the range to attack shipping far into the Atlantic. With the Fall of France, French ports become available to the Germans and U-boats can attack convoys anywhere in the Atlantic – making bad weather the convoys' greatest advantage. Germany is joined in the war by Italy, while the Spanish dictator Franco allows Axis U-boats to use Spanish harbours. The first lieutenant is put ashore due to illness, the junior officers mature and the ship crosses the Atlantic many times escorting convoys, often in brutal weather. They witness the sinking of many merchant vessels they are charged with protecting and the tragic deaths of merchant navy crewmen. A key scene involves Ericson's decision to carry out a depth charge attack even though the blast will kill merchant seamen floating in the water. After close to three years of service, including one U-boat sunk, Compass Rose is herself torpedoed and her crew forced to abandon ship. Most of the crew are lost. Taking to a couple of liferafts, Ericson survives this ordeal along with his first lieutenant, Lockhart (Donald Sinden), and with the few crew left (including Ferraby) they are picked up the next day. Ericson is promoted commander, and together with Lockhart, his now-promoted "Number One", takes command of a new frigate, HMS Saltash Castle. With Ericson leading an anti-submarine escort group they continue the monotonous but vital duty of convoy escort. Late in the war, while serving with the Arctic convoys, they doggedly pursue and sink another U-boat, marked as , Saltash Castles only "kill". As the war ends the ship is shown returning to port, as guard to a number of German submarines that have surrendered. 

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Written during the middle of World War II, Arrival and Departure reflects Koestler's own plight as a Hungarian refugee. Like Koestler, the main character is a former member of the Communist party. He escapes to "Neutralia," a neutral country based on Portugal, where Koestler himself had gone, and flees from there. (Harold Rosenberg wrote in a book review in Partisan Review that "there ought to be a law against such place-names.") Reflecting Koestler's later life relationship with science, and particularly his disagreement with various movements within psychiatry, the main character emerges from treatment psychically neutered, and the critical question of the novel is how much of his later trauma and political activity is due to a small incident in his childhood. 

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11 years after the events of the first film, Dr. Arthur Neuman is giving a tour of the hall of Norse mythology in Edge City Museum. Dr. Neuman mentions that Loki created the mask and unleashed it on Earth, and that those who wear the mask would have the powers of Loki. When Dr. Neuman mentions that Loki was imprisoned by Odin, a man in black becomes very angry and transforms, revealing himself to be Loki. The tourists panic and flee, but Dr. Neuman stays to argue with the angry god. Loki takes the mask on display, but realizes it is a fake. In anger, he removes Dr. Neuman's still talking face from his body and puts it on the mask stand, before getting rid of the guards and storming out of the museum in a whirlwind of rage. Meanwhile, the real mask, makes its way to a town called Fringe City, and is found in a river by a dog named Otis - who belongs to Tim Avery, an aspiring animator at an animation studio, who is feeling reluctant to become a father. He has a beautiful wife, Tonya, and a best friend, Jorge. On a tropical island, Loki is relaxing until Odin confronts him and orders his son to find the mask. Loki asks Odin to help him, but Odin tells Loki that this is his mess and he has to clean it up. Later that night, Tim puts on the mask for a Halloween party, transforming into an eccentric, green-faced party animal. When the company party turns out to be a bore, Tim uses his powers to perform a remix of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", making the party a success, and giving Tim's boss the idea to turn Tim's costumed persona into a cartoon, resulting in his promotion the next day. Tim returns to his house and, while still wearing the mask, conceives a baby. The baby, named Alvey, is born with the same powers as the mask. Meanwhile, Odin, possessing a store clerk, tells Loki about this and tells him that if he finds the child, he will find the mask. Later, Tonya goes on a business trip, leaving Tim with the baby. Tim, who has been promoted at work, desperately tries to work on his cartoon at home, but is continuously disrupted by baby Alvey, in order to get some peace and quiet, Tim lets Alvey watch Michigan J. Frog, Woody Woodpecker, The Flintstones, and Transformers on the television. Alvey devilishly obtains the idea to mess with his father's head by using his powers. Meanwhile, Otis the dog, who has been feeling neglected by Tim because of Alvey, dons the mask by accident and becomes a crazed animal version of himself, who wishes to get rid of the baby, but all his attempts are overturned by Alvey. Eventually, Loki finds the mask-born baby, and confronts Tim for the mask back, but is thwarted again and again by Alvey who uses his powers to protect his father. Eventually, Odin, possessing Tim's body, becomes fed up with Loki's destructive approach for defying him once again and strips his son of his powers. A seemingly-deranged Tim is later fired after failing to impress his boss during a pitch, but is able to reconcile and bond with Alvey. Loki, still determined to please his father, manages to complete a summoning ritual and appeal to Odin to restore his powers. Odin agrees, but only for a limited time, stating this as his last chance. Loki then kidnaps Alvey to exchange for the mask, but decides to keep him despite the exchange, causing Tim and Tonya, having returned home, to find them, as well as forcing Tim to don the mask again to fight Loki. The subsequent confrontation is relatively evenly matched due to both of them possessing equal powers, prompting Loki to halt the fight, and suggest that they let Alvey decide who he wants to live with. Although Loki tries to lure Alvey to him with toys and promises of fun, Tim wins by removing the mask and asks Alvey to come back to him using the human connection he has forged with his son, causing Alvey to choose Tim. Saddened and enraged, Loki tries to kill Tim, but his time has run out and Odin appears in person, where he begins to banish him. Tim, however, feels sorry for Loki and reminds Odin that regardless of their problems, they are still father and son and that "the most important thing in life is a relationship with your family". Touched by Tim's heartfelt speech, Odin reconciles with Loki as a son, and Tim gives the mask to Odin, who returns to Asgard with Loki. In the end, Tim's subsequent cartoon, based on his own experiences of Alvey and Otis competing for his attention, becomes a success and Tonya reveals that she is pregnant again. 

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The school has been run since its inception ten years earlier by two elderly educators, Mabel Edge and Hermione Baker, who are regarded by many as old spinsters hopelessly out of touch with reality, especially with what their teenage charges really think and feel. The 300 or so students are virtually indistinguishable from one another, a fact which is stressed by their names all starting with the letter M: Margot, Marion, Mary, Melissa, Merode, Midget, Mirabel, Moira. Their budding but suppressed sexuality—they are all between 16 and 18 years of age and "going to be attractive"—is constantly alluded to in the novel. ("They're only children, the girls I mean, and sex is unconscious at their age. It's such a temptation for a man.") Of the teaching staff, only few characters are mentioned. There is Miss Winstanley, young, colourless, and secretly in love with one of the few male teachers at the academy, economics tutor Sebastian Birt. Birt, however, a short and stout man in his late twenties, is having an affair with Elizabeth Rock, a 35-year-old woman recovering from a nervous breakdown who temporarily also lives on the school grounds, in her grandfather's cottage. That man, 76-year-old Mr Rock, is a retired scientist who has been granted the privilege to live there for the remainder of his life for past services rendered to the State. The ageing Rock, who is referred to as "the sage" by some (including the narrator) and as "Gapa" by his granddaughter, spends his time mainly with, and for, his pets—his albino sow, Daisy, his cat, Alice, and his goose, Ted. He describes himself as "a bit stiff about the joints these days", he has some difficulty climbing steps, has poor eyesight, is deaf in one ear and almost deaf in the other, and has recently had problems with his memory. In addition, one of his idiosyncrasies consists in putting all the post he gets in a big trunk without opening any of it, ever. Edge, one of the principals, has for some time wanted to thoroughly "spring-clean" the whole place and get rid of Rock, his granddaughter, and Birt, partly to secure the sage's cottage for the use of additional school staff. In other matters, she is more hesitant. When in the morning some girls report Mary and Merode missing, pointing out that neither of their beds has been slept in, Edge turns out to be very reluctant to use the official channels to inform relatives, the school supervisor, or the local police. Naturally it occurs to her and her colleague Baker that Mary and Merode might have eloped with two young men ("At the station much of their time was taken up with young women adrift, who, after fourteen days, returned brown and happy from a fortnight with a boy by the ocean."), but, rather than fearing the worst, they assume the girls will be back for that night's entertainment, a ball in honour of the academy's founder—without men of course. At the same time Edge turns down some of the staff's requests to be allowed to go swimming in the nearby lake, which is interpreted as a sure sign that one of the girls' bodies could turn up any time floating in the water. In the course of the day, especially where Rock is involved, many people talk at cross-purposes, deliberately as well as accidentally misunderstanding what others are saying, in many instances only hinting at facts or, worse, spreading rumours. Around noon Merode is found, right on the compound but somewhat dazed, under a fallen beech in the vicinity of Rock's cottage—the very beech tree used by Sebastian Birt and Elizabeth Rock when they want to have some fun. According to school regulations, Merode must not be interrogated before she has submitted a written statement about what has happened, and she is immediately locked away for her own good. The rest of the afternoon is mainly taken up with preparations for the dance. As usual, the Founder's Day Ball is held without any guests from outside the school. However, Rock and his granddaughter turn up unexpectedly but appropriately dressed, without having been invited by anyone. While Mary is still missing (the reader never learns where she is or what has happened to her), Elizabeth Rock and Sebastian Birt start dancing together cheek to cheek and, generally, appear glued to each other, a "display of animalism" Edge is not willing to put up with any longer. Almost at the end of her tether, she secretly indulges in a cigarette or two in her office. Meanwhile, Mr Rock is accosted by several of the girls who first want to dance with him and later drag him downstairs into the cellar of the building where they take turns kissing him and where they introduce him to the "Institute Inn", their secret club. Although Rock initially enjoys the girls' attentions, he quickly becomes appalled by their lack of morals and leaves the "club." He comes upon his nemesis, Miss Edge, but after his experiences with the girls he is more sympathetic to her difficulties maintaining order at the school. For her part, Edge is impressed with the courtly bearing Rock has affected in the Ball's formal setting and also consumed by a tobacco-fuelled lassitude. The two older adults have a pleasant conversation which comes to a head when Edge, almost without realising, finds herself proposing marriage to Rock. The sage is astounded, and politely but firmly rejects her suggestion. He then leaves the ball and returns home to his animals. At the end of the day no one has reached any conclusions, and everything remains undecided. 

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The story focuses on Nicole Gunther-Perrin, a young lawyer in late 20th-century Los Angeles who is dissatisfied with her hectic life, which includes balancing her career with being a mother and dealing with her deadbeat ex-husband and sexist coworkers. Believing the past to be a better time, one evening, after a particularly distressing day, she makes a wistful plea to a plaque of two Roman gods, Liber and Libera, who take it as a prayer. Unknown to her, the plaque, which she thinks is a tourist copy picked up in Europe on holidays on a trip a few years earlier, is actually an ancient relic from the Roman Era. The next morning, she finds herself waking up in the body of one of her ancient ancestors running a tavern in the 2nd century Carnuntum, in what is now Austria. In general, she finds out the hard way that life in the past was not quite what she thought it would be: slavery is taken for granted, and there are no women's rights, no effective medicine or clean medical practices, little entertainment, and no tampons. Over the course of a year and a half, she is forced to revise many of her long-held modern prejudices, including those against alcohol and corporal punishment. She survives epidemic disease (the Antonine Plague) and a Germanic invasion that is part of the Marcomannic Wars. She finds that early Christianity was uncomfortably zealous and apocalyptic, and, after a brutal rape by a Roman soldier, she discusses the role of government and its duties to abused citizens with Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Eventually, Liber and Libera fulfill her desire to return home. She wakes from a six-day 'coma' to discover that she can improve both her working and family life. Not only have her hard-won skills given her more empathy and self-confidence, but also she now has greater appreciation for the life that modern conveniences allow. With her new perspective, she can more easily and successfully deal with the stress and difficulties of her existence. 

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In 2020, the Mars I mission launches for planet Mars, commanded by Luke Graham (Don Cheadle). Upon arrival, the team discovers a bright white formation in the Cydonia region, which they suspect is an extrusion from a subsurface geothermal column of water, useful to future human colonization. After reporting this to the Earth- orbiting World Space Station, they go to investigate the formation and hear a low sound on their communications system. Radar initially reports that the formation is metal, but when they increase power to the radar, a large vortex appears and kills everyone except Luke. After the vortex subsides, the formation is revealed to be part of a large humanoid face. The event creates an electromagnetic pulse the space station observes, after which it receives a distress message from Luke. Realizing Luke couldn't have left because the pulse would have damaged the computer system of the ERV ("Earth Return Vehicle"), they repurpose the Mars II mission into a rescue. Months later, as Mars Rescue, consisting of Commander Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), his wife Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen), recent widower Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), and technician Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O'Connell), nears Mars orbit, they discover that all satellite imagery of the formation area is covered with static. Micrometeoroids breach the ship, causing damage that leads to the engines blowing up. The crew are forced to abandon ship and get to the REMO ("Resupply Module") orbiting Mars. Woody launches himself at the module and manages to attach a tether to it, but is knocked off into space. Terri tries to rescue Woody, but knowing she would run out of fuel before reaching him, Woody removes his helmet, killing himself to save her. The survivors arrive on the surface of Mars, and begin repairing the ERV. They find Luke living in a greenhouse, who shows them pictures of the face, and reveals that the pulses in the low sound they heard represented a 3D model of human-like DNA, but missing a pair of chromosomes. Jim determines they must complete the sequence to pass a test, and they send a rover to broadcast the completed signal via radar. Following the transmission, an opening appears in the side of the structure. With a massive dust storm approaching Jim, Terri, and Luke head to the formation, while Phil stays to finish repairing the ERV. Phil is ordered to launch, with or without them, before the storm hits. The three astronauts enter the opening, which seals behind them. A three-dimensional projection of the solar system depicts the planet Mars, covered with water, being struck by a large asteroid and rendered uninhabitable. A projected humanoid alien reveals that the natives of Mars evacuated the planet in spaceships, one of which was sent to seed Earth with DNA in the hopes that it would create lifeforms who could one day land on Mars and be recognized as descendants. An invitation is offered for one of their group to follow the Martians to their new home. Jim accepts the invitation, bidding farewell to Terri and Luke, and is sealed inside a small capsule. Terri and Luke race back to the ERV and arrive just as Phil is about to take off. They barely escape the dust storm into space as Jim's capsule is launched from the crumbling formation and past them toward the Martians' home. 

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Rohit Kumar (Aamir Khan) is an aspiring playback singer while Kiran (Manisha Koirala) is an ambitious classical singer-in-training. They meet, relate to each other's sentiments, fall in love and get married prematurely. When Kiran's parents oppose their marriage, they decide to lead a separate life. However, after marriage, Kiran's ambitions take a back seat as she feels suppressed by her household responsibilities and looking after her son. Time fails to abate Kiran's frustration until she decides to leave Rohit and start a new life all over again. Now a loner, Rohit is forced to look after both his son and his own falling career. After some obvious teething troubles, Rohit succeeds in creating a separate world for himself and his son, Sunil. Meanwhile, Kiran becomes a huge film star. She tries to reconcile with Rohit but as luck would have it, Rohit is a proud man and misinterprets her support as her pity and things become worse. A court case is eventually filed for the custody of Sunil. Rohit faces a tough time preparing for the case as his financial position is not as sound as Kiran's. He sells his best songs at a very low price so that he can fight the custody battle. During the court battle, Kiran's lawyer Bhujbal (Paresh Rawal) uses every possible trick to show that Rohit does not deserve the custody of his child. He even uses the information that Rohit had told Kiran (only because he felt that she had a right to know about her son's life) against him. Rohit instructs his lawyer to fight the case honestly as he does not wish to hurt Kiran and her reputation. In the end, the court rules in favor of the mother and Kiran is given custody of the child. During this time, common friends of Rohit and Kiran try to explain to Kiran that Rohit had changed for the better and that he was now very much attached to his son. Kiran also realises that their son would never find happiness only with her. She tells Rohit that she will not take Sonu away and that she wants him to stay at his own home to which Rohit replies that this was Kiran's home as well. Kiran seemingly moves to get out of the house but then closes the door and smiles. Rohit and Kiran hug each other and their son and the movie ends. 

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Kenji is a lonely librarian in the Japan Foundation in Bangkok. Living in an apartment full of precise stacks of books, his half-hearted attempts to kill himself are continually interrupted by the people around him. Kenji's most notable obstacle is his self-absorbed brother, Yukio, a yakuza, or Japanese gangster. Yukio fled from Japan to escape the wrath of his employer, with whose daughter he had had sex.Last Life in the Universe, English Sub, 13:18 Yukio's friend Takashi suggests that if it were his daughter, he would have the despoiler killed, but Kenji's brother laughs this warning off. Yukio frequents a club where he can enjoy the attention of a bunny-eared hostess, a local girl named Nid. Nid's sister, Noi, is furious at her sibling for having slept with her boyfriend, Jon. One day in the library, Kenji spies on Nid, clad in a school girl's uniform. Soon after, he discovers that his brother has hidden a pistol inside a teddy bear. He is about to shoot himself when Yukio is slain by Takashi, who was apparently hired by Yukio's employer. (During the library scene where Kenji first encounters Nid, a hanging poster for the Takashi Miike film Ichi the Killer is clearly featured. Tadanobu Asano was also the star of that film.) Takashi sees Kenji, who appears hopeful at his impending death, but suddenly Kenji shoots and kills the assassin. Not long after that, Kenji is about to jump off a bridge when Noi and Nid, driving past, have an argument. Noi throws Nid out of the car, then reconsiders. Nid, distracted by Kenji sitting on the railing of the bridge, is struck by another car and dies. Kenji and Noi, both having lost a sibling, form a tentative friendship. The introspective Kenji asks the extroverted Noi if he can stay with her, unwilling to spend time with the two corpses in his apartment. Noi agrees, and invites the fussy Japanese man into her disastrously unkempt beachside home. As Kenji begins cleaning, Noi prepares to leave for Japan to further her career. Surreal elements creep into the film; Noi sees the house magically cleaning itself, while Kenji watches Noi transform into her temptress sister. The couple, in some ways polar opposites and in some ways mirror images, form a semi-romantic relationship. Meanwhile, the abusive and promiscuous ex- boyfriend Jon begins calling, angry that Noi thinks she can leave him. Three yakuza are also dispatched to find out what has happened to Takashi. In the final segments, Kenji drives Noi to the airport, then decides he will join her. He returns to his apartment to gather his things and purposely knocks over a stack of books. While he is in the bathroom, first Jon, then the yakuza arrive. Jon is slain, and Kenji apparently escapes out the window. The movie then cuts back and forth between two scenes: one, in which Kenji has been arrested for some unspecified crime, and another in which he is re-united with Noi in Japan. The relationship between or canonicity of these two scenes is not made clear by the movie - particularly whether the reuniting scene is imagined or not. Throughout the movie, images of the furtive gecko who lives in Noi's house, as well as The Last Lizard are shown, Kenji's children's book about a reptile who wakes up to discover he is the final member of his species. The fictional lizard realizes that even being with his enemies, the other lizards who picked on him, was preferable to being alone. 

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Mr. Burns reserves the Springfield Air and Space Museum for a plant company party. While there, Burns acts strangely kind to all of his employees. At the end of the party, Burns announces that he will terminate the prescription drug plan. The workers chase after him, but Burns is able to escape in a wacky flying machine, based on the Pitts Sky Car. At home, the Simpsons try to figure out how they can afford new prescription drugs. Homer decides to get another job, but he can not have his choice of starring on Friends as Rachel’s Irish cousin, and is unable to get a new job. Other companies follow Burns's lead and all prescription drug plans are canceled. Marge and Lisa go to the pharmaceutical company to voice their concerns but are ignored. At the retirement home, all prescription drugs are unaffordable and the staff decide to let the old folks go cold turkey. Grampa Simpson comes up with a plan to get more drugs for Springfield. He and Homer go to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and with help from one of Grampa's Canadian friends, they are able to get unlimited access to the drugs they need. They take them back into the United States and are praised in Springfield as heroes. Later, as Grampa and Homer plan to do more smuggling trips in order to give more support for the town, Apu and Ned ask if they can tag along with them, stating that their children are desperate to get their medicine. Homer accepts and allows them on the trip, even though Ned tries to convert Apu on the way (despite the fact he claims to be sarcastically congratulating him on his bravery of worshiping an idol). Ned even meets his Canadian counterpart, but takes an instant dislike to him when he offers Ned a "reeferino". A coffee accident fools a border guard into thinking Apu is 'expressing his faith' as a Muslim (despite being Hindu), causing the whole border patrol to hold the men at gunpoint. Homer tries to pacify the situation, but unfortunately, he accidentally slips out a large amount of pills on the pavement while opening the door, exposing their smuggling. As a result, Homer and his gang are arrested, but soon let go and banned from ever going to Canada. Meanwhile, Smithers' thyroid becomes a goiter as he can no longer afford the medicine he needs that was provided under the drug plan. Burns vows to help him so he takes Homer and Grampa along in his plane, the "Plywood Pelican", which he built for Nazi Germany. After getting the drugs, while flying back to Springfield, the plane loses altitude and Burns jumps off with Homer and Grampa's parachutes as they are "gifts" for his nephews. They crash-land in Springfield Town Square, almost crushing Chief Wiggum's squad car. Wiggum arrests Grampa but the people of Springfield protest, as his smuggling has gotten them the medicine they need. Seeing how much Grampa had been helping for the whole town, Wiggum lets Grampa go free. In the meantime, Smithers is saved with a kiss from Mr. Burns after receiving his medicine, and Burns, feeling very remorseful, decides to bring back the drug plan to all his full-time employees, much to their delight. Homer gets a new job with Burns as a "freelance consultant" and then wonders what the lump on his neck is. 

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Jared Phelps returns home from his mission in Wyoming to find a world very different from the one he left two years ago. This movie opens with a send-off at the airport full of family and friends of Elder Phelps. He serves a two- year mission in the Wyoming, Evanston South Mission. The opening credits are shown by using instant photographs. They also show Elder Phelps going from a greenie (new missionary), to district leader, to zone leader and finally to an assistant to the mission president. Upon returning home, things don't go so well. His parents thought that he was coming home the following month, so no one is there to meet him at the airport. He didn't receive the letter that his family had moved, so he is surprised by the greeting of the new homeowner in the form of a karate kick while he is in the shower. (He later refers to this as being, "Kung-fued by a naked ninja" ) His bed is now occupied by a foreign exchange student from Tonga. When he is reunited with his parents, he discovers his mother is pregnant. Jared's girlfriend, who promised to wait for him to return, is getting married in two weeks. The jewelry store where he bought the ring won't take it back. And his former employer who promised to give him a job upon his return has sold the business and started an Internet enterprise and the only job opening is to mine diamonds in South Africa. Things get worse from there. He is rejected from BYU. He quickly goes through a series of jobs, and even considers selling knives. He develops a romantic relationship with Kelly, the daughter of H. Ronald Powers, a general authority that, to his embarrassment, he is unfamiliar with (despite the fact that he gave a "great talk" last October in general conference, whom everyone seems to refer to). While Jared is on a date with Kelly, his mother goes into labor and has a boy. He also gets boils, and eventually gets arrested due to the actions of a friend. Because of the arrest, he is fired from his job and released from his church calling as elders quorum president. He has to seriously consider whether to lie and keep him and his friend out of jail, or to tell the truth and send himself and/or his friend to jail. In the end, he decides to tell the truth, and is ultimately cleared of all charges, but his friend must face some time in jail. Later, Jared gives a talk at church about how his mission blessed his life in ways he didn't expect. He decides to take night classes and reapply for BYU in the fall. After some time dating Kelly, the two are seen in a jewelry shop to exchange Jared's old ring for a new one, as they are now engaged. 

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The Best Two Years portrays the experience of four missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living in the same apartment in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The movie begins with Elder Rogers finding out that his new companion will be a "greenie", a newly trained missionary fresh from the Missionary Training Center. He and the other two missionaries that reside in the same apartment, Elder Johnson and Elder Van Pelt, go to the train station to meet the new elder. Elder Rogers finds out that the new missionary, Elder Calhoun, is exactly what he had jokingly predicted his new companion would be like. Elder Rogers used to be an excellent missionary, until his girlfriend married one of his former mission companions. That is why he and the other two missionaries residing in the same apartment are surprised that the mission president has assigned him to be the trainer (first companion and mentor) to a missionary new to the mission. The new missionary, Elder Calhoun, tackles mission work with unbounded enthusiasm. He attempts to talk to anyone although he has little knowledge of the Dutch language. Despite his poor Dutch, he maintains an eager attitude. Fortunately for him, he soon encounters a man from the United States that speaks English. They speak briefly in the park before the man goes off with his girlfriend. Later, when he encounters the same man in a market, Calhoun gives him a Dutch Book of Mormon with his telephone number. Despite what the other three missionaries expect, the man does call and asks for Calhoun. The man doesn't want to meet the missionaries in his own apartment because his roommates wouldn't understand. The missionaries arrange for him to meet them in their apartment. When he tries to give back the Book of Mormon because he doesn't read Dutch, they promptly give him one in English. The missionaries find out his name (Kyle Harrison) and teach him a discussion (short lesson) about Joseph Smith and Joseph's First Vision. Afterwards, Kyle shows sincere desire to learn more, so the missionaries schedule another discussion. Tension has been building throughout the entire movie between Elder Johnson and Elder Van Pelt. Earlier, Johnson had received an audio tape from his girlfriend. He hasn't been able to play the tape for several days because Van Pelt had lent their tape player to a ward member. Also, Van Pelt is annoyed by Johnson's repeated use of the word "flip", as a mild substitute for any of a number of profane words. Johnson had told Van Pelt to hit him every time he used that word, but while waiting outside the apartment Johnson says it, and frustrated with Van Pelt for always hitting him, physically forces him to stop, showing his anger. This tension culminates outside of the missionary apartment just as Kyle is leaving from his first discussion. As he is leaving, Johnson and Van Pelt are looking in, hoping for him to leave soon. However, Johnson states: "Oh, flip! They're just standing around in there!" Forgetting Johnson's threats if he does so again, Van Pelt hits Johnson on the back. Johnson chases Van Pelt around, and eventually, as Kyle is on his way out of the door, Van Pelt enters and hides. Johnson quickly bursts in as well, smashing Kyle behind the door. He demands to know where Van Pelt is, and misunderstands most of what Rogers says and hears only, "Behind the door". He angrily starts to smash Kyle even more, until he realized what he just did. Rogers and Calhoun leave with Kyle out the door, but rush back in when they hear Van Pelt scream. They run in to see that Johnson has just hogtied Van Pelt with a rope when the mission president arrives in the apartment. President Sandburg gives Johnson and Van Pelt a mild, but appropriate and effective, reprimand for their misbehavior. (Prescriptions were respectively and .) He recommends Elder Calhoun work on his Dutch, (Calhoun had, in Dutch, stated: "With all the walking and bike riding, my rear end has become quite beautiful."), and gently reprimands Rogers for not having written letters to his mother for a while, and persuades him to send at least one letter a week home for the remainder of his mission. Things start to get worse for Elder Johnson when the president has to talk to him and Van Pelt decides to listen to his tape from his girlfriend. At the end of the tape, Johnson's girlfriend reveals she will marry a returned missionary after dating him for three weeks. The second discussion with Kyle is followed by several more, again in the missionaries' apartment. He does decide to be become a member of the Church. The baptism is scheduled for the Saturday just over a week from then. Kyle chooses Rogers to baptize him, to the great surprise of Rogers. Johnson starts to resemble Elder Rogers when he starts to not do his work and jokingly says that the zone leaders are coming to promote Van Pelt because of Van Pelts' high hopes, like those Rogers had when his girlfriend broke up with him. Afterwards, Rogers convinces him to not do the same thing he did after Calhoun and Van Pelt leave for a store. The baptism takes place in a river as scheduled, on the same day that Rogers is leaving for home. There are long good-byes at the train station. And in the station, with Rogers looking on from the train, Calhoun finally understands and speaks Dutch well. 

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Set in the fictional Camden College in New Hampshire, the film opens at the "End of the World" party, where students Lauren Hynde, Paul Denton, and Sean Bateman give apathetic interior monologues on their lives and briefly exchange glances with one another. Lauren, previously a virgin, takes a film student upstairs to have sex and passes out; she wakes to find herself being raped by a townie while the film student records it, and reflects on how she had planned to lose her virginity to Victor, her now ex-boyfriend. Meanwhile, Paul, who is bisexual, tries to have sex with a jock, only to be bashed when it turns out the jock is deeply closeted. A bruised and beaten Sean is shown drinking a whole bottle of Jack Daniel's, tearing up a series of purple letters, before approaching and having sex with a blonde girl at the party. The plot then moves backwards several months to the beginning of the school year, and explores the love triangle between Lauren, Paul, and Sean. Misinterpreting Sean's willingness to spend time with him, Paul makes several advances, to which Sean is oblivious. Paul fantasizes about having sex with Sean while masturbating. Concurrently, Lauren also finds herself attracted to Sean despite saving her virginity for her traveling boyfriend, Victor. Sean reciprocates her feelings, and assumes the anonymous, purple love letters he has started receiving are from Lauren. Sean masturbates to reading these letters and fantasizes about Lauren. While Paul is visiting his friend "Dick", Sean has sex with Lauren's roommate Lara at the "Dressed to Get Screwed" party. Sean regrets it immediately, and realizes that he is in love with Lauren. It is then revealed that another, unnamed cafeteria girl is the author of Sean's love letters; after seeing him leave the party with Lara, she sends him a suicide note before cutting her wrists in the dorm bathtub. Lauren, finding Sean with Lara, runs to the girls' bathroom in tears, only to find the unnamed girl's body, leaving Lauren extremely distressed. Sean, still believing Lauren wrote the purple letters, misinterprets the unnamed girl's suicide note and assumes Lauren never wants to be with him. Lauren decides to lose her virginity to her Art History professor Lance Lawson. But being married and worried about losing his tenure, he simply allows her to perform fellatio on him instead. After numerous failed attempts at suicide, Sean fakes his death and, unaware that Lauren recently found a corpse, unintentionally upsets her further when she finds him pretending to be dead. After stealing drugs from dealer Rupert, Sean tries to speak to Lauren again, asking only to know her. Lauren tells Sean he will never know her, and abandons him. She approaches Victor, who has finally returned to Camden College, only to find that Victor is having sex with Lara and does not remember who Lauren is, leaving her completely distraught. Paul, upon finding a drunk Sean, tries to talk to him, parroting Sean's own words by saying he merely wants to know him. Sean coldly rejects him, using Lauren's words to say that Paul will never know him. Paul throws a snowball at Sean, then angrily runs off in tears. Sean checks his campus mailbox in vain, only to find that the love notes have stopped. He is then cornered by Rupert and his Jamaican partner, Guest, and brutally beaten. The three protagonists then attend the "End of the World" party and the plot returns to the introduction. After seeing Lauren heading upstairs with the film student, Sean finally accepts he cannot be with her, and tears up the purple letters he believes to be from her. It is then revealed that, rather than having sex with the blonde girl as he does in the intro, Sean has an epiphany, reconsiders and he instead leaves his drink and exits. Paul and Lauren meet on the house porch and reflect on the recent events, as well as on Sean, whom they watch depart on his motorcycle. Sean begins narrating his final thoughts only for them to end prematurely as the film cuts to the end credits, which are run backwards. 

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After faithfully serving a full-time mission for the LDS Church and marrying, Jonathan Jordan finds himself divorced and once again a member of the LDS single adult world. He attends a "singles ward", a congregation specifically for unmarried adults where the ultimate goal is Eternal Marriage. Disenchanted, Jordan stops going to church. He even creates a standup routine lampooning the Mormon lifestyle. His resistance to the church continues until he falls for Cammie Giles, a member of the local singles ward. Suddenly, Jordan finds going to church more appealing. But is he attending church again just to impress her? During the course of the movie, Jonathan frequently breaks the fourth wall to narrate events to the audience. 

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Sports writer Steve Taggart (O'Neal) volunteers to do a series of articles for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner about a compulsive sports and casino gambler he calls "Mr. Green", who is in fact himself. His editor John Saxon enthusiastically assigns Taggart the gambling series, which soon attracts a large readership interest. Taggart becomes more obsessed with gambling in Las Vegas, which lands him even more deeply in debt. He compounds his money and gambling problems by dealing with associated loan sharks, including the mean and dangerous L.A. bookmaker known as "The Dutchman" (Chad Everett). Taggart soon learns that even a local pro football quarterback, whose football team he covers, is also on the Dutchman's payroll - as a means of cutting his own sports gambling debts. After clearing the story further with his sports editor (John Saxon), Taggart journeys to Las Vegas for a field report on his gambling series; through a casino owner he meets a sexy casino cocktail hostess named Flo (Catherine Hicks). Loving the tables, at Flo's urging he gambles with her at roulette and wins. Taggart also checks out assorted Las Vegas bookmakers, including Leroy's. Taggart meets various Vegas gambling and business figures, including famed Las Vegas Sun publisher Hank Greenspun, for more insights into the Las Vegas gambling world. He is unaware that the Dutchman's tough guy enforcer, "Panama Hat" (William Smith), is following him, until "The Hat" confronts him at the hotel pool as Taggart attempts to relax on a chaise longue. Panama Hat orders Taggart to return to Los Angeles immediately, and settle up with the Dutchman, or there will be dire consequences. Taggart's risk-addiction and perennial gambling money-losses ultimately spill over into his personal life. After a day trip to Knott's Berry Farm Taggart brings his young daughter (Bridgette Andersen) to Hollywood Park; at the track pressbox, they chat with his colleagues, including famed Los Angeles newspaper sportswriters, the L.A. Times Jim Murray and the L.A. Herald Examiner's Alan Malamud. Taggart, while trying to stem his gambling while at the racetrack, is physically assaulted by a track-goer to whom he owes money. Reporting to work the next day at the Herald Examiner, his editor says he loves the "Mr. Green" series, and foolishly advances Taggart $10,000 dollars for "Mr. Green" to use as seed money for more gambling. Upon more reflection on how truly dangerous sports gambling can be, Taggart visits Gamblers Anonymous in order to end his gambling compulsion. Taggart still returns to Las Vegas, where he becomes increasingly acquainted with high- roller Charley Peru (Giancarlo Giannini), in hopes of making a large score and breaking even. He also hopes Peru can help him get Panama Hat off Taggart's back. Eventually Taggart decides to stop gambling "forever". Returning to Los Angeles, to celebrate "kicking" his gambling habit, Taggart places a few dollars into a slot machine at the Las Vegas Airport, where he magically scores a huge jackpot. Taggart immediately gets an attorney to hold the huge score in trust fund for his daughter. When he asks the attorney to reassure him "that even I cannot touch the money?", his attorney replies, "especially, not you." 

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Exactly one year prior to the beginning of DearS, humanity made unprecedented contact with extraterrestrial life. Forced to crash land into Tokyo Bay when, en route to their home planet of Thanatos, their spacecraft breaks down, 150 humanoid aliens are naturalized into Japanese society and affectionately nicknamed "DearS"; a portmanteau of the words "Dear" and "Friends". Takeya Ikuhara is a temperamental seventeen-year- old Japanese student attending the fictitious Koharu High School with a strong prejudice against the DearS. Due to a childhood scare, he believes that the aliens are fake, worthless beings that have generated nationwide overhype and are secretly plotting to take control of Earth. On his way home from school he discovers a homeless DearS who, after fainting and much to his annoyance, he feeds and shelters in his apartment. The girl, who he nicknames Ren, is infantile and friendly, and grows obsequious and dependent upon Takeya, a responsibility he tries to disassociate himself from. Her oblivious tenacity keeps her around, however, and over time, realizing Ren's genuine care and empathy for him, Takeya has a change of heart. Unfortunately, because Ren is deemed defective, DearS headquarters orders her arrest. 

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The small fishing village Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne on the north coast of Quebec is in decline. Every resident collects welfare. To lure a company into building a plastic container factory nearby, they need to double their population of 120, have a resident doctor, and give a $50,000 bribe for the company owner. Montreal plastic surgeon Dr. Christopher Lewis (David Boutin) gets pulled over for speeding by an officer, Réal Fournier (Jean-Pierre Gonthier), the former mayor of Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne who moved to the city because he, like most of the residents of Ste-Marie, couldn't get a job there. Réal will not arrest him for drug possession - Dr. Lewis is carrying a packet of cocaine - if Dr. Lewis will visit Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne for one month. In a deleted scene, Dr. Lewis sells cocaine to his patients. Germain Lesage (Raymond Bouchard), a welfare recipient himself and the new mayor, hatches a plan. The entire village will convince Dr. Lewis to stay. They tap his phone, and pretend to share his likes: cricket, fusion jazz, and all the same foods. Henri Giroux (Benoît Brière), the local banker whose sole job is to cash the townfolks' welfare cheques, leaves small amounts of money for Dr. Lewis to find as small measures to increase Dr. Lewis' happiness about being in town, and attempts to secure a loan through his bank for the bribe. Dr. Lewis likes the beautiful post office worker Ève Beauchemin (Lucie Laurier), but Ève knows he has a girlfriend, Brigitte, in Montreal. The ruse works, but they cannot secure a loan. Henri fronts the money from his personal savings, after a bank executive tells him that he has a job only as a favour to his father, and that his position could easily be replaced by an ATM. When the plastics company owner arrives, everyone continues their elaborate trick, and convinces him to build the factory there. The owner is ready to sign, but insists that they must have a doctor. When Dr. Lewis learns that Brigitte has been having an affair with his best friend Paul for three years, he proclaims that he will stay because everyone in the village is genuine. Germain feels bad for lying, and "lets him off the hook" by telling him another lie in that they have secured another person as a permanent doctor. Hurt, Dr. Lewis turns to Ève, who has disliked all the lying, and confesses all to him, including the phone tap. Dr. Lewis confronts Germain about the lies, with Germain confirming the accusations. When Dr. Lewis asks him if he will learn the game of cricket for real if he decides to stay, Germain replies "no". It is then that Dr. Lewis decides to stay. The factory is built, Ste-Marie-la-Mauderne is saved, everyone gains renewed pride, and Dr. Lewis has five years in which to woo Ève. 

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Harvek Milos Krumpetzki is born "upside down and back to front" in Poland in 1922. As a child, his mother helps him collect pieces of information called "fakts" that are written in a notebook hung around his neck, which are presented throughout the film. At the outbreak of World War II, shortly after his home is burned down and his parents freeze to death, Harvek migrates to Australia as a refugee, settles in Spotswood, Victoria, and changes his name to Harvie Krumpet. Despite a life filled with bad luck, including being diagnosed with Tourette syndrome; having part of his skull replaced with a steel plate that becomes magnetised after being struck by lightning; developing asthma due to heavy smoking; and losing one of his testicles to cancer, Harvie remains optimistic, living out his own eccentric way of life. In one of the pivotal episodes of his life, Harvie sits in the park next to a statue of Horace while he hears the instructional Carpe diem, which inspires him to make many changes in his life, such as embracing nudism and vegetarianism, and embarking on daring rescue missions for animal rights. He marries Val, a nurse he meets in hospital, and they adopt a daughter, Ruby, who has deformed limbs due to the effects of thalidomide. After Ruby moves to America to pursue a career as a lawyer and Val dies of a stroke, Harvie develops Alzheimer's disease and is placed in a nursing home. Although he briefly considers suicide, he decides to continue living the remainder of his life to the fullest. The final "fakt" presented reads: "Life is like a cigarette. Smoke it to the butt." 

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Schultze (played by Horst Krause)Schultze Gets the Blues Roger Ebert is a large, recently retired salt- miner living in Teutschenthal (near Halle, Saxony-Anhalt in Germany). Along with his also laid-off friends Jürgen and Manfred, he finds himself restless with so much spare time. For years, he has played traditional polka music on his accordion, but a series of upheavals in his life inspire an interest in American Zydeco and Cajun music. Though being afraid of travelling to the United States at the beginning he accepts his music club's wish to represent it at a German folk music festival in New Braunfels, Texas. But instead of appearing there he chooses to travel in a motor boat around the countryside despite speaking little English, immersing himself in the music and culture of the Bayou. Finally, among his newly found friends he becomes very sick and presumably dies. Back in Teutschenthal a funeral is held for Schultze which turns into a decent and mildly happy celebration of his life: "Herr, lehre uns bedenken, dass wir alle einmal sterben müssen, auf das wir im Leben klug werden" - "Lord, teach us to understand we all have to die sometime, that we become wiser in our lives" (Psalm 90,12). 

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"The Cop and the Anthem" has only one character who is given a name, the protagonist "Soapy." It is made clear that Soapy is homeless, a member of underclass men and women who flocked to New York City during the earliest years of the twentieth century. The short story's narrative is set in an unstated day in late fall. Soapy faces the urgent necessity of finding some sort of shelter for the winter. He is psychologically experienced in thinking of Blackwell's Island, the local jail, as a de facto winter homeless shelter, and the narrative shows him developing a series of tactics intended to encourage the police to classify him as a criminal and arrest him. Soapy's ploys include swindling a restaurant into serving him an expensive meal, vandalizing the plate-glass window of a luxury shop, repeating his eatery exploit at a humble diner, sexually harassing a young woman, pretending to be publicly intoxicated, and stealing another man's umbrella. However, all of these attempts are quickly exposed as failures. The upper-class restaurant looks at Soapy's threadbare clothes and refuses to serve him. A police officer responds to the broken window but decides to pursue an innocent bystander. The diner refuses to have Soapy arrested, and instead has two servers throw Soapy out onto a concrete pavement. Soapy's failures to earn his desired arrest continue. The young woman, far from feeling harassed, proves to be more than ready for action. Another police officer observes Soapy impersonating a drunk and disorderly man, but assumes that the exhibitionistic conduct is that of a Yale student celebrating a victory over "Hartford College" in football. Finally, the victim of the umbrella theft relinquishes the item without a struggle. Based on these events, Soapy despairs of his goal of getting arrested and imprisoned. With the autumn sun gone and night having fallen, Soapy lingers by a small Christian church, considering his plight. As O. Henry describes events, the small church has a working organ and a practicing organist. As Soapy listens to the church organ play an anthem, he experiences a spiritual epiphany in which he resolves to cease to be homeless, end his life as a tramp afflicted with unemployment, and regain his self-respect. Soapy recalls that a successful businessman had once offered him a job. Lost in a reverie, Soapy decides that on the very next day he will seek out this potential mentor and apply for employment. As Soapy stands on the street and considers this plan for his future, however, a "cop" (policeman) taps him on the shoulder and asks him what he is doing. When Soapy answers "Nothing," his fate is sealed: he has been arrested for loitering. In the magistrate's court on the following day, he is convicted of a misdemeanor and is sentenced to three months in Blackwell's Island, the New York City jail. 

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Lisa Kelly manages an isolated BDSM resort called The Club that offers its high-end clients an exclusive setting in which they can experience the life of a Master or Mistress. Prospective submissive slaves, paid at the end of their term at Eden (which varies from six months to two years), are presented at auctions by the most respected Trainers from across the world. As Head Female Trainer and co-founder Lisa gets the first pick of the new slaves and chooses Elliot Slater—with whom she shares immediate and undeniable chemistry that intensifies throughout their time together, eventually resulting in love. 

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Ruth Anne, nicknamed "Bone" Boatwright, is a young girl growing up in Greenville, South Carolina in the 1950s. Born out of wedlock to Anney, Bone lives with her mother and their extended family in a poor part of town. Anney loves Bone, but is still very much a child herself, tired out from working and needy for attention and adoration. Bone and Anney nearly always have to face the shame of the "ILLEGITIMATE" stamp on Bone's birth certificate. When the county courthouse burns down, Anney is happy that a copy of Bone's birth certificate no longer exists. After her kind, hardworking first husband, Lyle Parsons, the father of Bone's half-sister, is killed in an automobile accident, Anney remarries a man named Glen Waddell, who seems attentive until Anney and Glen's baby dies at birth. Glen first molests Bone while waiting in the car for the birth of his child. Frustrated by the loss of his eagerly-anticipated son, Anney's inability to have more children, and his own inability to manage his temper and maintain steady employment, Glen begins to physically and sexually abuse Bone regularly, beating her in the bathroom. Bone wakes her mother up in the middle of the night, barely able to walk because of the immense pain she is in. Anney takes her to the hospital, where the doctor berates Anney for beating the child so badly that her coccyx is broken. The only thing Bone says is 'Mama.' Anney takes Bone to the car, leaving the hospital against the doctor's wishes, and slaps Glen's hand away as he tries to comfort the girl. Anney is saddened and angered by her new husband's behavior towards her child and takes Bone to her sister Alma's house to recuperate. However, once Bone is better, Anney returns to Glen after he swears to never touch Bone again. While reading with her mama at the cafe, Anney asks Bone to go and stay with her Aunt Ruth since she is very sick. Ruth asks Bone about Glen and if he has ever hurt her. Bone says no and the two grow close listening to gospel music on the radio. After a visit from Dee Dee, Ruth dies of sickness. At Aunt Ruth's funeral, Bone's Aunt Raylene finds her in the bathroom falling over drunk after drinking too much alcohol and when she tries to take her to a bed, she discovers lashes on her legs and alerts the girl's uncles, Earle, Wade, and Travis, and a man, who beat Glen unconscious for what he did to her. Bone is sent to live with her aunts, and eventually tells her mother that she is allowed to love Glen, but Bone will never come home to him again. Eventually, Glen comes around while the aunts are out, trying to force her to come back. But she refuses, asks him to leave, then threatens to tell Anney everything he did to her. When she fights back, he punches, and then rapes her. Anney discovers the rape and retaliates by hitting Glen over the head with a glass bottle, breaking it and resulting in him bleeding. She pulls, kicks, and throws him off of Bone, screams at him, then carries her out of the house away from him and to her car. Glen stumbles out of the house after Anney, screaming his apologies and saying he can't live without her. She yells at him to stay away from her and Bone. She then puts Bone into her car. When Glen tries to comfort her, she pushes him away, gets into her car, starts it and tries to drive away, attempting to abandon him. Glen then leans against the car door and repeatedly smashes his head against it, screaming for Anney to kill him. Instead, she strokes his head in forgiveness, believing he will never hurt Bone again. This causes Bone to feel disgusted and amazed, making her the first time hate her own mother. Ultimately, Anney returns to Glen. Moments after, Bone is visited at the hospital by Aunt Raylene. When the cops attempt to question her about who brutalized her, she still refuses to reveal that it was Glen and calls out for her mother who is nowhere to be found. In the end, Bone is allowed to stay with her Aunt Raylene and Uncle Earle, far away from the reach of those who would harm her. Her mother visits one final time to deliver to her the copy of her birth certificate without the mark of "ILLEGITIMATE", and apologizes for what happened, before driving away to rejoin Glen. Bone remains with her Aunt Raylene and Uncle Earle, and with this final, tearful goodbye, she cries for her mother's sacrifice and for the freedom she has at last achieved. Her final words are narrated by Laura Dern as the film ends. "Who had mama been? What did she wanted to be or do before I was born? Once I was born, her hopes turned, and I climbed up her life like a flower reaching for the sun. Her life had folded into mine. Who would I be when I was 15, 20, 30? Would I be as strong as she had been? As hungry for love? As desperate, determined and ashamed? I wouldn't know but I was already who I was gonna be. Someone like her, like my mama, a Boatwright, a bastard, a bastard out of Carolina." 

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Set in an unspecified Latin American country, the novel features Desiderio, a government minister in the main city, currently under attack by Doctor Hoffman's reality- distorting machines. Desiderio embarks on a journey to find Hoffman's former physics teacher, eventually bringing him to Hoffman's castle. 

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Orphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents. Jake, a farmhand from Virginia, rides with the 10-year-old boy. On the same train, headed to the same destination, is the Shimerda family from Bohemia. Jim lives with his grandparents in the home they have built, helping as he can with chores to ease the labor on the others. The home has the dining room and kitchen downstairs, like a basement, with small windows at the top of the walls, an arrangement quite different from Jim’s home in Virginia. The sleeping quarters and parlor are at ground level. The Shimerda family paid for a homestead which proves to have no home on it, just a cave in the earth, and not much of the land broken for cultivation. The two families are nearest neighbors to each other in a sparsely settled land. Ántonia, the elder daughter in the Shimerda family, is a few years older than young Jim. The two are friends from the start, helped by Mrs. Shimerda asking that Jim teach both her daughters to read English. Ántonia helps Mrs. Burden in her kitchen when she visits, learning more about cooking and housekeeping. The first year is extremely difficult for the Shimerda family, without a proper house in the winter. Mr. Shimerda comes to thank the Burdens for the Christmas gifts given to them, and has a peaceful day with them, sharing a meal and the parts of a Christian tradition that Protestant Mr. Burden and Catholic Mr. Shimerda respect. He did not want to move from Bohemia, where he had a skilled trade, a home and friends with whom he could play his violin. His wife is sure life will be better for her children in America. The pressures of the new life are too much for Mr. Shimerda, who kills himself before the winter is finished. The nearest Catholic priest is too far away for last rites. He is buried without formal rites at the corner marker of their homestead, a place that is left alone when the territory is later marked out with section lines and roads. Ántonia stops her lessons and begins to work the land with her older brother. The wood piled up to build their log cabin is made into a house. Jim continues to have adventures with Ántonia when they can, discovering nature around them, alive with color in summer and almost monotone in winter. She is a girl full of life. Deep memories are set in both of them from the adventures they share, including the time Jim killed a long rattlesnake with a shovel they were fetching for Ambrosch, her older brother. A few years after Jim arrives, his grandparents move to the edge of town, buying a house while renting their farm. Their neighbors, the Harlings, have a housekeeper to help with meals and care of the children. When they need a new housekeeper, Mrs. Burden connects Ántonia with Mrs. Harling, who hires her for good wages. Becoming a town girl is a success, as Ántonia is popular with the children, and learns more about running a household, letting her brother handle the heavy farm chores. She stays in town for a few years, having her worst experience with Mr. and Mrs. Cutter. The couple goes out of town while she is their housekeeper, after Mr. Cutter said something that made Ántonia uncomfortable to stay alone in the house as requested. Jim stays there in her place, only to be surprised by Mr. Cutter returning to take advantage of Ántonia, whom he expects will be alone and defenseless. Instead, Jim attacks the intruder, belatedly realizing that it is Mr. Cutter. Pavelka house in rural Webster County, Nebraska, setting of "Cuzak's Boys" Jim does well in school, the valedictorian of his high school class. He attends the new state university in Lincoln, where his mind is opened to a new intellectual life. In his second year, he finds one of the immigrant farm girls, Lena, is in Lincoln, too, with a successful dressmaking business. He takes her to plays, which they both enjoy. His teacher realizes that Jim is so distracted from his studies, that he suggests Jim come with him to finish his studies at Harvard in Boston. He does, where he then studies the law. He becomes an attorney for one of the western railroads. He keeps in touch with Ántonia, whose life takes a hard turn when the man she loves proposes marriage, but deceives her and leaves her with child. She moves back in with her mother. Years later, Jim visits Ántonia, meeting Anton Cuzak, her husband and father of ten more children, on their farm in Nebraska. He visits with them, getting to know her sons especially. They know all about him, as he features in the stories of their mother’s childhood. She is happy with her brood and all the work of a farm wife. Jim makes plans to take her sons on a hunting trip next year. 

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After the events of the first film that are summarized by Craig (Ice Cube), his father Willie (Witherspoon) decides it would be safer for Craig to move to Rancho Cucamonga and live with his uncle Elroy (Curry) and cousin Day-Day (Epps), who had won the lottery and were able to afford a nice house in a middle class neighborhood. Elroy spends his days consuming large amounts of marijuana and making sex tapes with his wife, Auntie Suga (Whitley) while Day-Day works at a record store and tries to avoid his pregnant ex-girlfriend D’Wana (Jones) and her violent sister Baby D (Allen). Day-Day shows Craig around the house and neighborhood, introducing him to his neighbor Mrs. Ho-Kym (Hill). While there, they witness another neighbor family, Joker (Vargas) and his two brothers, return home in their lowrider. Day-Day explains to Craig that actually after winning the lottery, all of the taxes and fees that were taken out only left them with enough to buy their house and car. However, a letter carrier (Rapaport) delivers a delinquency notice that their house could be repossessed, but Day-Day is running late for work and unable to bring it to his dad's attention first. Craig joins his aunt and uncle for a joint which is strong enough to make him pass out, and he later goes to visit Day-Day at work. While there, Day-Day finds D’Wana vandalizing his car with Baby D for the second time that day, and attempts to confront them, only to be physically attacked by Baby D. Pinky (Powell) arrives at the store finding that it has been locked up while Day-Day and his friend/coworker Roach (Pierce) are in the back. After an armed scuffle with Craig in which Pinky mistook him for a robber, Craig gains the upper hand and holds Pinky’s gun on him, attempting to explain that he’s Day-Day’s cousin. When Day-Day returns and confirms this, Pinky fires both him and Roach. Craig, Day-Day and Roach then try to figure out how to resolve the delinquency issue so they can keep their house. Craig remembers seeing one of the Joker brothers carrying a hydraulic pump from their car inside, suspecting that they may be hiding cash inside. Craig convinces Day-Day and Roach to help him get inside the Joker’s house and see what’s inside the pump. The trio drug the Joker’s guard dog Chico with an edible Roach had given them, rendering the dog unconscious. Craig then sneaks into the Joker’s house while the three brothers are partying with girls they brought home. Craig locates the pump and confirms that drug cash is hidden inside. Narrowly avoiding detection by Baby Joker, he slips into Karla’s room where he flirts with her before escaping out of her upstairs window. Meanwhile, concerned that Craig is taking too long, Day-Day and Roach knock on the Joker’s front door, which is answered by all three brothers armed with handguns and an assault rifle. The brothers take Day-Day and Roach hostage while trying to figure out what happened to their money. After learning that Craig could be in trouble, Willie returns to the neighborhood at the same time Deebo (Lister Jr.) and his fellow prison inmate Tyrone (Fingaz) arrive, the latter two having been tracking Craig down all day after they escaped from prison so Deebo could have revenge on Craig. Willie teams up with Elroy, and the two incapacitate two of the Joker brothers and Craig is able to free Day-Day and Roach. Soon after, the police arrive and arrest all three Joker brothers on drug charges and re-arrest Deebo and Tyrone for their prison break. Craig hands the cash from the pump over to Day-Day and his uncle so they can pay off their debt and keep their house, then Craig returns home with his dad, having learned the suburbs aren’t any safer than the hood. 

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B movie film producer Bobby Bowfinger has saved up to direct a movie for his entire life—he now has $2,184 to pay for production costs. He has a script ("Chubby Rain") penned by an accountant, Afrim, and a camera operator, Dave, with access to studio-owned equipment. Bowfinger then lines up several actors who are hungry for work, along with a crowd of illegal Mexican immigrants for a camera crew; the only other thing he needs is access to a studio in order to distribute his masterwork. He extracts a promise from a high-ranking Universal Pictures executive, Jerry Renfro, that Universal will distribute the film if it includes currently-hot action star Kit Ramsey. Ramsey—a pompous, neurotic, and paranoid actor—refuses, so Bowfinger constructs a plan to covertly film all of Ramsey's scenes without his knowledge. The actors, told that Ramsey is method acting and will not be interacting with them outside of their scenes, walk up to Ramsey in public and recite their lines while hidden cameras catch Ramsey's confused reactions. The plan goes well at first: Ramsey (who is a member of an organization called MindHead) swallows the movie's alien invasion premise and believes he is genuinely being stalked by aliens, resulting in an exceptionally genuine and intense performance. However, the strain on his already-precarious mental state leads him to go into hiding in order to maintain his sanity, stalling the film's production. Bowfinger resorts to hiring a Ramsey lookalike named Jiff. Jiff is kind, amiable and rather clueless. He even runs through a gauntlet of "stunt drivers" racing along a major freeway when asked. During a chat with the other cast members, Jiff mentions that he is Kit Ramsey's brother, explaining the likeness. Using this new knowledge, Bowfinger has Jiff find out Kit Ramsey's movements and the final scene to the film is readied for shooting. The final scene is at an observatory. Though otherwise pleased with Ramsey's unscripted dialogue, Bowfinger considers his character's final line "Gotcha suckers!" to be the key moment of the film, and directs one of the actors to guide Ramsey through the scene under the guise of showing him how to get rid of the aliens. During the filming, Ramsey becomes terrified and struggles to deliver the final line. At this point, Ramsey's mentor at MindHead, Terry Stricter, has discovered evidence that Kit's "aliens" may not be just in his head. MindHead officials track Bowfinger to the observatory, and shut down production. Bowfinger's camera crew show him B-roll footage of Ramsey they were filming off-set, just in case they saw anything they could use. The footage shows Ramsey donning a paper bag over his head and exposing himself to an amused Laker Girl Cheerleading Squad, something MindHead specifically discouraged him from doing. Bowfinger blackmails MindHead with the footage, threatening to release it and ruin Ramsey's career (which would also endanger MindHead's finances as Ramsey is a major source of revenue for the company). MindHead advises the star to finish the project. Bowfinger finally gets to sit at the premiere of a film he himself directed, and is awed. Following the arguable success of the film, Bowfinger receives a rare Fed-Ex envelope—an offer to film a martial arts film called "Fake Purse Ninjas" starring himself and Jiff Ramsey. 

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The plot centers on Inukai Heishirō (Mitsuru Fukikoshi), the son of a clan officer. One of his clan's most precious heirlooms, a sword given them by the Shogun, has been stolen by the samurai Kazamatsuri (Tomoyasu Hotei). Against his father's advice, Heishirō insists on retrieving the sword himself. His father sends two ninja after him to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. Kazamatsuri wounds Heishirō, and kills one of his companions. The young noble ends up staying with an older samurai (Morio Kazama) and his daughter Koharu (Tamaki Ogawa) while he heals from his wound and plans his next move. The older samurai tries to dissuade him from fighting, but Heishirō's honor won't allow him to leave Kazamatsuri alive. The older samurai, who turns out to be the master Hanbei Mizoguchi, convinces him to fight Kazamatsuri by throwing rocks rather than with swords. Meanwhile, Kazamatsuri settles for a few days at a gambling house owned by Lady Okatsu (Mari Natsuki), who falls in love with him. Then one night one of the ninja sent to protect Heishirō bribes her to poison his sake for one thousand gold. She does, but Kazamatsuri tastes the poison and kills Okatsu. He then kidnaps Koharu in an attempt to get the master Mizoguchi to fight him. Mizoguchi reveals to Heishirō that he killed Koharu's father, and has since never drawn his sword on another man, despite his immense skill. They then go to find Kazamatsuri and rescue Koharu. While Mizoguchi stalls Kazamatsuri, Heishirō takes Koharu aside and says he will marry her if Mizoguchi wins. Kazamatsuri fights Mizoguchi, who only draws his sword after his opponent destroys his wooden sword. He then disarms Kazamatsuri near a cliff. Kazamatsuri, admitting defeat, commits suicide by jumping off the cliff. Heishirō and the others go to the bottom, where there is no sign of Kazamatsuri's body, but Koharu spots the stolen sword at the bottom of the river, where Heishirō retrieves it. Flash forward one year. Heishirō has married Koharu, the sword is restored, and Mizoguchi is now an official in Heishiro's clan. 

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At the end of the previous novel, Stowaway to Mars, the British spaceship, the Gloria Mundi departed Mars, expecting the USSR ship to leave at the same time. It did not. In the Stowaway to Mars it is mentioned that while the British reached Earth safely, it was now several years later, and still there had been no sign of the Soviet vessel. This story tells their fate. While on the planet in the previous story, the Soviet and British crews had explored part of Mars around their landing sites, discovering vegetation plant life, in the form of scrubby bushes growing along the banks of ancient canal works, with sluggish water still in them. The planet also hosted AI robots, hostile to the visitors from Earth. They seemed almost wild, feral machines living without control of organic life. Due to fatal encounters with these robots, and ill planned gunfight with the British crew, the Soviets now number four crewmen. Preparing to depart for Earth they discuss the fate of their mission - originally a race between the nations of Earth to be the first to reach Mars. The British and the Gloria Mundi had won the race, reach Mars before the Soviets and United States (whose rocket had crashed with no survivors upon reaching Mars). The Russians speculate what would be the global reaction if the Gloria Mundi reaches Earth, and then the Soviets return, and claim that they were the first to land on Mars, not the British. They conclude that they would not be believed. However, they reason that if they succeed in racing the British home, then they can claim that the USSR was the first to conquer the Red Planet, and the British will be disbelieved. Both spaceships prepare to take off, with the Russians planning to boost their engines to achieve greater velocity than the smaller British craft. Upon take off, however, the Soviet ship suffers a malfunction, crash-landing back upon Mars. Although the ship is relatively undamaged and the four crew survive the impact, the ship has landed on its side and they lack the means to right it for take off. Even worse, they have no more fuel for a second attempt. Stranded on Mars, their wrecked ship surrounded by the hostile robots, the Russians are saved by the arrival of more advanced and powerful robots, commanded by a Martian. Humanoid in appearance, he is one of the same Martians encountered by the British party (but not by the Soviets) in the previous story. His machines drive off the feral AIs, and allows the Russians to leave their ship. Using advanced technology, the Martian is able to modify the mind of one of their crew so that they can communicate. The Martian offers to provide the Soviet crew safety in one of their enclosed cities while they decide what to do with them. Faced with few options the Russians agree. They are taken by the advanced robots to a nearby Martian city. They find it to be in good working order, fully automated, with dwellings suitable for their needs. There are no people living there however. Given an apartment within the city the Martian communicates with them via video screen from another settlement. Talking via the crew member they modified, the Martian explains to the Soviets how the Martians are a dying race, as is their world. Once fertile and full of life, Mars long ago ran short of water. As its rivers dried up, so its life died with it. There was even an attempt to melt the icecaps in an attempt to provide more water. While this worked for a time, eventually even this water was used up, only holding off the inevitable for a few generations and the planet continued to decline. The Martian tells that his people are now few in number, and expect that they will eventually become extinct. Asked to explain the robots, the Soviets are told how the Martians experimented with forms of artificial intelligence, and consider the robots to be their successors and evolutionary children. The rogue AIs encountered earlier in the novel were early attempts, and they now live beyond control of the Martians. The more advanced robots obey their commands, and perform such tasks as are required in the city. The Martian is eager for the earthmen to leave his world, and expresses a willingness to aid them. He tells the Russians that they can remain as guests in the city while he will instruct the robots to repair their ship and refuel it for the voyage back to Earth. Due to their earlier encounter with the British, the Martian is confident that the city can produce both atmosphere and food suitable for the humans. While they wait for the repairs to be completed, the Soviets explore the abandoned city. They discover several interesting machines and devices, and their engineer believes that he can take several examples of advanced technology back to Earth that will give their country an advantage over the capitalist nations in the Cold War. The chance to learn of the Martian civilisation far eclipses losing the race back to Earth (the Gloria Mundi will by now have had such a head-start that catching them up will be impossible). After several days of exploring, two of the crew discover a huge vault deep beneath the city. Inside are countless fluid-filled capsules containing apparently dead Martians. Opening one, they are shocked to discover that the occupant is alive, but the Martian female dies swiftly upon the opening of the container, likely due to trauma caused by incorrect revival. Realising that all the capsules contain living Martians in some form of suspended animation, the ship's doctor attempts to revive a second one. This time the Russians take the precaution of bringing the capsule to their quarters and preparing medical equipment before they try to awaken the second Martian. Their efforts are successful, and the sleeper awakes, surviving the process. Once recovered he is able to talk with the modified Russian, and discuss his past. It seems that he was once part of a larger Martian population living many hundreds of years ago, at the time when the world was drying up. At the time the best hope for their civilisation was seen as the Project to Melt the Ice Caps. This great work would take many years to achieve, and with the aid of the robot workforce, only need a few Martians to supervise the project. To conserve water and resources, the vast majority of the population agreed to go into suspended animation for the decades it would take. They would be woken years later by the descendants of those who remained to direct the project, once the world was fertile once more. He is shocked to see the world at it is now - far worse and more barren than in his day. It appears that he and the other sleepers have been left to hibernate for far longer than originally envisaged. The Soviet crew discuss the implications of this, speculating what happened. They conclude that while the early generations of Martians entered into the plan with good intentions, the later generations who had melted the poles, reneged on their ancestors' agreement. They had seen no reason to awaken these sleeping people, when they had done all the work, and could keep all the benefits for themselves. Now the world had dried up once more, and the sleepers would be left forever in the silent cities. The Russians are worried by this revelation, and also by the reaction of the Martian they woke. Angry at the betrayal of him, his wife and all his people he blames the current rulers of Mars. He claims that he can also order the robots, and will have revenge upon those who kept him dormant for so long. The Earthmen argue about what course of action they should take. They debate warning the current Martians, given that their return to Earth depends on their goodwill, compared to the injustice suffered by the sleepers. Also if it will do any good at all, and if it is not best to pretend nothing happened. Eventually they prevail upon the modified crewman to use the video link to contact the main Martian settlement and warn them. He does so, causing their host to become displeased. The Russian assures his fellows that the ruling Martian was not too concerned, and that the robots have since been modified and that the sleepers can be stopped. Also their ship is now ready for launch, and they can depart the planet. As they prepare to leave the city, the doctor confronts the modified crewman, revealing that he knows that he lied to them, and did not actually warn the ruling Martians. As they argue they spot more Martian sleepers now awake in the city, some armed, using machines to awaken others. It appears that their Martian friend has awoken other sleepers and is preparing to attack the ruling Martians. Before the four men can react, the sleeper they woke bursts into their quarters, and in an angry rage uses a raygun to kill the doctor. He is shot dead by the remaining Russians. They conclude that he had gone into hibernation beside his wife, and that she must have been the first sleeper they tried to awake and inadvertently killed. While arguing what to do, the Soviets notice from the window that sleepers are attempting to board their spaceship, now fuelled and ready for launch. As two of the remaining crew race to the landing site to try and stop them, the last Soviet remains behind in the city. He watches as his comrades are unable to prevent several of the sleepers entering their ship and sealing the hatch. They are still on the boarding ladder when the ignition sequence is triggered and the ship blasts off, killing two Russians. The last Russian considers his options, locates the Martian's ray-gun and uses it to kill himself. The ultimate fate of the Martian civilisation is unknown, nor the final landing site of the Russian ship, which could have carried a crew of Martians to a remote corner of Earth. Category:1973 short story collections Category:Short story collections by John Wyndham Category:Books published posthumously 

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* "The Lost Machine" is the posthumous history of an artificial intelligence's experiences on the barbaric planet Earth in the primitive times of the early 20th Century. This story is directly related to Wyndham's 1936 novel, Planet Plane, in which some of the elements of this story are outlined by the character, Joan. * "The Man From Beyond" sees a human desperately attempting to convince the people of Venus to have nothing to do with their neighbours in space as they are without hope of redemption. * "The Perfect Creature" has also been published as "Una" in Jizzle and tells the story of a scientist's attempts to create the 'perfect' creature, and what happens when he gets the hormone balance wrong. * "The Trojan Beam" sees a British secret agent used as a go-between with the warring states of China and Japan and sees the Trojan Beam used to alter the balance of power. * "Vengeance by Proxy" is a horror story updating the vampire myth to modern Eastern Europe and pastiching the story telling form of Bram Stoker's Dracula. * Adaption dramatises the need for life to be adapted to the world in which it grows on as a father searches desperately for his long lost daughter. * "Pawley's Peepholes" sees time travelers from the future disrupting small town life by treating it as a quaint place to sight see. * "The Red Stuff" is a mysterious, fast growing entity that first consumes a meteorite, then an entire space ship and ends up on a moon base. * "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" is the report of a silicone based life form experiencing hostility on Earth. * "Dumb Martian" tells of a Human and his Martian 'wife' out deep in space, far away from civilisation and the man's slow descent into brutality and madness. * "Close Behind Him" is a horror story about a burglar who becomes convinced that the spirit of a man killed during a break in is coming ever closer behind him. * "The Emptiness of Space" is a story of the Troon family as seen in The Outward Urge. In New Caledonia, 2194, an astronaut suffers the after effects of the urge to travel in space and fears he has lost his soul. 

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Set in the 1930s, the film depicts Gertrude Stein and her lover and assistant Alice B. Toklas meeting Pablo Picasso and his lover Fernande Olivier, as well as the authors Ernest Hemingway and Guillaume Apollinaire.TV Guide 

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Andrei Rublev is divided into eight episodes, with a prologue and an epilogue only loosely related to the main film. The main film charts the life of the great icon painter through seven episodes which either parallel his life or represent episodic transitions in his life. The background is 15th century Russia, a turbulent period characterized by fighting between rival princes and the Tatar invasions. 

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In medieval Sweden, prosperous Christian Per Töre sends his daughter, Karin, to take candles to the church. Karin is accompanied by her pregnant servant Ingeri, who secretly worships the Norse deity Odin. Along their way through the forest on horseback, Ingeri becomes frightened when they come to a stream-side mill and admonishes Karin; but Karin chooses to proceed on her own leaving Ingeri at the mill. Ingeri encounters a one-eyed man at the stream-side mill. When Ingeri asks about his name he enigmatically responds he has none "in these days". The man tells Ingeri that he can see and hear things others can not. When the man makes sexual advances towards her and promises her power, Ingeri flees in terror. Meanwhile, Karin meets three herdsmen, two men and a boy, and invites them to eat her lunch with her. Eventually, the two older men rape and murder Karin. Ingeri, after having caught up to the group, witnesses the whole ordeal hidden from a distance. The two older men then prepare to leave the scene with Karin's clothing. The younger boy is left with the body, but he takes the situation poorly, and is racked with guilt. He even tries to bury the body by sprinkling dirt but stops midway, and runs along with the older men. The herders then, unknowingly, seek shelter at the home of the murdered girl. During the night, one of the goat herders offers to sell Karin's clothes to her mother, and she suspects the worst. After they fall asleep, the mother locks the trio in the dining chamber and reveals her suspicions to Töre. Töre prepares to discover the truth about the situation and encounters Ingeri, who has also returned. She breaks down in front of Töre and tells him about the rape and murder. She confesses that she secretly wished for Karin's death out of jealousy. In a fit of rage, Töre decides to murder the herdsmen at the crack of dawn. He stabs one of the older men to death with a butcher knife and throws the other into the fire. He kills the boy too, lifting and hurling him against the wall, while his wife watches horrified. Soon after, Karin's parents, along with the members of their household, set out to find their daughter's body with Ingeri leading the way. Töre breaks down on seeing Karin's body and calls upon God. He vows that, although he cannot understand why God would allow such a thing to happen, he will build a church at the site of his daughter's death. As her parents lift Karin's body from the ground, a spring emerges from the spot where her head rested. Ingeri proceeds to wash herself with the water while Karin's mother cleans the dirt from her daughter's face. 

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Kleinman is awakened from his sleep by a vigilante mob, which claims to be looking for a serial killer and therefore to be needing his help. Kleinman's landlady and fiancée gives him a bag containing pepper spray. Irmy and her boyfriend Paul, performers at a circus, quarrel about getting married and having a baby. Paul leaves and goes to another tent where he has sex with Marie, another artist. Seeing this, Irmy runs to the city and enters a brothel. Irmy also ends up having sex with a student named Jack. Kleinman visits a coroner's house and has a glass of sherry with him. But after he leaves, the coroner is murdered by the killer. Kleinman comes to the police station to protest a local family's eviction. There, the police talk about the coroner's murder, saying that they have a clue about the killer in the fingerprints on the sherry glass. A panicked Kleinman meets Irmy in the police station, who had been arrested at the brothel for prostitution. She protests against the police calling her "whore,” and in the confusion Kleinman confiscates the evidence. Irmy is allowed to leave the police station after a $50 fine, and she meets Kleinman outside. Together they start exploring the city, seeing its different scenes — a man peeping into a woman's room, a starving mother and child, a church — and decide to go back. Paul arrives in the city looking for Irmy. He goes into a bar where Jack is having a drink. The student reflects on the wonderful experience he had with "a sword-swallower,” shocking Paul. Kleinman and Irmy return to his place to stay but are refused entry by his fiancée. They go to the pier but are ambushed by the vigilante mob who find the sherry glass in Kleinman's pocket. Thinking him to be the killer, they decide to lynch Irmy and Kleinman, but the latter uses the pepper spray and they escape. Meanwhile, Irmy and Paul meet, and at first Paul is ready to kill Irmy for sleeping with another man. They break off their fight when they find the starving woman murdered, and the baby lying on the ground. They decide to keep the child and return to the circus. Kleinman comes to the brothel searching for Irmy but is unable to find her. From his rival at work, he learns about the circus leaving the town and decides to follow it. At the circus, Kleinman meets the magician Armstead, whom he greatly admires. The murderer arrives and tries to kill them but is thwarted by Armstead. Kleinman becomes Armstead's assistant on the circus and Irmy and Paul continue their careers as circus performers, while raising their newfound child. 

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The plot follows Johnny, the protagonist and narrator, and his boss, McDunn, who are putting in a night's work at a remote lighthouse in late November. The lighthouse's resonating fog horn attracts a sea monster. This is in fact the third time the monster has visited the lighthouse: he has been attracted by the same fog horn on the same night for the last two years. McDunn attributes the monster's actions to feelings of unrequited love for the lighthouse, whose fog horn sounds exactly like the wailings of the sea monster himself. The fog horn tricks the monster into thinking he has found another of his kind, one who acts as though the monster did not even exist. McDunn and Johnny turn off the fog horn, and in a rage, the monster destroys the lighthouse before retreating to the sea. The lighthouse is reconstructed with reinforced concrete and Johnny finds a new job away from the lighthouse. Years later, Johnny returns and asks McDunn if the monster ever returned; it never did. McDunn hypothesizes that the monster will continue to wait in the depths of the ocean and only emerge to look for others like it when humankind is gone from the world. 

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Four socialites unexpectedly clash: heiress Brooke Carter runs into the Italian gambler Johnny Spanish at the race track while playboy Michael O. Pritchard nearly runs into stage star Kitty O'Kelly with his car. Backstage at Kitty's show, it turns out she and Brooke are old friends who attended public school together. The foursome do the town, accompanied by Brooke's companion Elizabeth, who throws herself at Michael's butler and chauffeur Rodney James. The four friends change partners at a party, where Brooke and Michael step outside behind Kitty and Johnny. In an effort to make the others jealous, Kitty, Johnny, Brooke, Michael, Elizabeth and Rodney begin their romance. 

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In the fictional small town of Charlestown, the local mill is about to lay off 10,000 workers, indirectly threatening the existence of the town's minor league hockey team, the Charlestown Chiefs. After discovering that the team is to be folded, player- coach Reggie Dunlop lets the Hanson Brothers, the club's recent acquisitions, loose on their opponents. The brothers' actively violent and thuggish style of play excites the fans. Dunlop retools the team, using violence to draw big crowds. The team's new style produces unintended consequences that affect not only Dunlop, but the Chiefs' star player, Ned Braden, along with the rest of the team. Dunlop exploits Braden's marital troubles in his efforts to get him to take part in the team's brawling, to no avail. Several games degenerate into bench-clearing brawls, including one that takes place before the opening face-off, and another that brings the local police into the locker room to arrest the Hanson Brothers. Eventually Dunlop meets team owner Anita McCambridge, and discovers his efforts to increase the team's popularity (and value) through violence have been for naught, as McCambridge's better option is to fold the team as a tax write-off. By the time Dunlop decides to abandon the new strategy of violence over skill, the Chiefs' main rivals in Syracuse have already upped the ante by stocking their team full of goons in preparation for the league's championship game. After being crushed during the first period, the disgusted general manager tells them that various National Hockey League scouts accepted his invitation to the game, as he was hoping that the Chiefs' habitual escapades would get the players signed. Upon hearing this news, Dunlop decides to have his team revert to their previous violent approach, much to the joy of the spectators. When Braden witnesses his wife cheering for the Chiefs, he adopts a similarly radical but still non-violent way of participation by performing a live striptease on the rink amidst rousing cheers. When the Syracuse team's captain protests against this daredevil demonstration and hits the referee for dismissing him, Syracuse is disqualified, granting the Chiefs the championship. 

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Detective John Russo attempts to cheat on his girlfriend, country singer Christy Miller, with a blonde taxi driver named Deborah Wilson (whom he calls Sam), with the connivance of his colleague Arthur Brodsky. Russo has met Deborah en route from a meeting at which he was assigned to follow Angela Niotes, wife of a European tycoon. Detective Charles Rutledge falls in love with Dolores Martin, whose husband has also hired him to spy on her. Charles is cautioned against this infatuation by his buddy Arthur. Feeling slighted by Russo's infidelity, Christy throws herself at Charles, but she ultimately falls in love with Dolores's extramarital paramour, Jose. Russo's pursuit of Angela leads him to fall in love with her. He is grief-stricken when her husband and she return to Europe, but the two women have arranged that Deborah will take her place and nurse his broken heart. Dolores does fall for Charles and they plan to marry when her divorce is final, the only happy ending. 

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Cahit Tomruk is a Turkish German in his 40s. He has given up on life after the death of his wife and seeks solace in cocaine and alcohol. One night, he intentionally drives his car head-on into a wall and barely survives. At the psychiatric clinic where he is treated, a young woman named Sibel Güner approaches him, recognizing him as being Turkish-German. She asks Cahit to marry her, but he rudely declines. Cahit later realizes she is at the hospital after also trying to commit suicide. He sees her interacting with her conservative family who condemn her behaviour and threaten her. Offering him a beer, she confides that her brother broke her nose when he saw her holding hands with a man, and she is desperate to escape her family and needs to marry a fellow Turk to do so. When Cahit again declines to marry her, she stabs herself in the wrists with a broken bottle. The incident shakes him up, and Cahit agrees to marry Sibel after all on the basis that it is a sham, enabling her to leave her family home and live a sexually free life. He goes to her family pretending he saw her at the hospital where her injuries were treated and seeking their approval to marry her. Despite the age disparity and not knowing much about him, Sibel's family agrees to the marriage. They live separate private lives but eventually fall in love. After Cahit accidentally kills one of Sibel's former lovers when the lover insults her in public, Cahit is sent to prison and Sibel, her infidelity exposed, is disowned by her family. While Cahit is in prison, Sibel tells him that she will wait for him and, with nowhere else to stay, goes to Istanbul to her cousin Selma, a single career woman who manages a hotel. Sibel takes a job as a maid in Selma's hotel and stays with her, but finding her new life to be restrictive and conventional, leaving Selma's apartment to live with a bartender who offers her drugs and alcohol. Eventually, he rapes her when she passes out and throws her out. Roaming the streets that night, she is accosted by three men who eventually beat her up. One of them stabs her and they leave her for dead. Several years later, Cahit travels to Istanbul upon his release from prison, hoping to find Sibel. Selma tells him that Sibel is in a relationship and has a daughter. Cahit waits in a hotel for Sibel's call. It eventually comes, and they meet and make love for a weekend while her boyfriend is on a business trip. After their tryst, Cahit asks Sibel to take her daughter and run away with him. She agrees but, while packing at home, she hears her husband talking on the phone to her delighted daughter. Cahit waits at the bus stop but she never shows up. The film ends with Cahit on a bus, presumably traveling to Mersin, the city where he was born. 

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Dwarfs confined in an institution on a remote island rebel against the guards and director, also dwarfs, in a display of mayhem. They gleefully break windows and dishes, abandon a running truck to drive itself in circles, engineer food fights and cock fights, set fire to pots of flowers, kill a large pig, torment some blind dwarfs, and perform a mock crucifixion of a monkey. 

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The film Lamerica is a story of two men caught up in the startup of a scam shoe company. The main characters Gino and Spiro (later discovered to be Michele), go on an adventure of misfortune. Gino is a young man originally from Sicily who is involved in a company that is trying to “give every Albanian good shoes,” but it truly is a scam. Mr. Fiore (Gino’s boss) and Gino were unsatisfied with the officials that were originally set up to run the company. With the help of an Albanian middleman, they decided to find their own candidate who would be a “man of straw”, meaning he would do what they say. Spiro, or Michele, was the old man that the company hired to be their Albanian figurehead “chairman” of the company. We later learn that Spiro was a Sicilian named Michele and the problems ensued. This film compares and contrasts the old Italian man and the young Italian man and their seemingly varying identities as two men. The major contrast between the two is not the country in which they are from, but the time period in which they lived. Spiro is from the “old” Italy, where fascism and a hard life was all he knew, and Gino is from the “new” boom years where the emphasis is on money and materialistic items. This difference is substantially indicated throughout the film. This adventure unravels Spiro's tragic personal history and allows Gino to become intimately acquainted with the full extent of Albanian poverty. This Albanian poverty is a mirror of how Italy used to be during Spiro's time. Gino's car tires are stolen, while the fancy shoes he gave Spiro are also stolen by children. Gino and Spiro follow a group of Albanians who are headed for Italy in search for a better life, first by truck and later by ship. The Albanian exodus parallels that of Italians for the United States, which is where Spiro believes that they are heading. 

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Doris Robertson (Kyla Pratt), a depressed teenager, is grieving the death of her grandfather and resisting her foster sister Lauri's (Dania Ramirez) efforts to engage socially. Upon learning that her parents will be away for a two day business trip to the Poconos, Doris' tear hits her television remote, as Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids is on. The tear opens up a portal to the cartoon world, Fat Albert (Kenan Thompson) jumps out of the television upon seeing Doris (except real-life) , knowing she has a problem. Rudy, Dumb Donald (Marques Houston), Mushmouth, Bucky, and Old Weird Harold jump out, too; Bill (Keith Robinson) tells Russell to stay put and cover for them. Doris insists she is fine, but the gang knows otherwise. When the show ends, they have to wait until tomorrow's show to come back. They follow Doris to school and are amazed by the new technology. Albert becomes infatuated with Lauri. Reggie, an annoying schoolmate with an obsessive crush on Lauri, challenges Albert to a track race that Albert wins. In another attempt to help Doris, the gang persuades cheerleaders to invite them all to an outdoor party. With some reluctance, Doris agrees to attend. While at the party, Lauri dances with Albert. Reggie desperately attempts to make her jealous by dancing with Doris. When Lauri does not notice him, he tries to kiss Doris. Doris is offended and causes a scene. Albert warns the boy to stay away from Doris. The next day, Doris goes to school but asks the gang to go to the park instead of following her. Harold, normally clumsy, joins in a basketball game and is able to play perfectly. Mushmouth, who cannot talk normally, is taught how to speak by a little girl. Donald goes to the library, where he can read and remove his pink face covering hat. When Doris takes them home, three of the gang members – Bucky, Harold and Donald – jump into the television. Breaking News interrupts the show before the other four can enter. Albert and Bill have an argument in private about going back. The gang takes Doris and Lauri to a fair on a junk made car. Doris says she would date Rudy if he were a real person when he asks. Searching for guidance, Fat Albert meets his creator, Bill Cosby, and tells him of the dilemma. Though frightened and skeptical at first, Cosby proceeds to explain to him that his character is based on Doris' grandfather, Albert Robertson, which explains Doris' confusion over why Fat Albert seems so familiar. Mr. Cosby warns Fat Albert he has to return to the cartoon world, or he will turn into celluloid dust. Devastated, Albert tells Lauri he must leave, but she thinks he is being insensitive. The next day, Mushmouth, Rudy and Bill jump back into the television. Albert goes to a track meet where Doris and Lauri are competing and encourages Doris to a victory. Reggie, who witnessed that the gang is from the television, attempts to threaten Albert, but he pushes him aside. Albert rushes to the girls' home on a borrowed skateboard. He says goodbye to Doris and Lauri and jumps back into the television, and manages to take back the focus of the show from a gang of bullies that threatened to do so earlier in the film, as seen by Russell. Sometime later, Cosby and his friends, who helped inspire the cartoon characters from the show, stand in front of their old friend Albert Robertson's grave. As the camera pans on each of the men, images of their counterparts are seen. Doris watches them from afar as the old men race away, showing that they are still kids at heart, the same kids from the television show that they helped Bill Cosby inspire. Before the ending credits start, Fat Albert encourages the audience to finish watching the credits and help each other. 

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The main plot of the novel is generally concerned with the rise of Marius, his marriage to Julia, his success in replacing Metellus as general in charge of the Numidian theatre of war, his defeat of King Jugurtha of Numidia, his re- organization of the Roman Army system, his unprecedented consecutive consulships, his defeat of a massive invasion of German tribes (the Teutones, the Cimbri and the Marcomanni/Cherusci/Tigurini), and the details of his relationship with his subordinate and close friend Sulla. However, although Marius can be considered the protagonist, Sulla occasionally becomes the central figure of the narrative; there are several lengthy sections dealing with his plot to murder the two wealthy women with whom he lives, his use of the newfound wealth in establishing himself politically, his homosexual relationship with the Greek child-actor Metrobius, and his marriage to the (fictitious) younger daughter of 'Julius Caesar Grandfather', Julilla. McCullough explains that, while it is certainly known Sulla's first wife was a Julia, it is not known to which branch of the Julii she belonged, but she was certainly a relation of Marius's better-known Julian wife, hence the decision to assign her the role in the novel of a younger sister. A third storyline is focused on the figures of Marcus Livius Drusus and his sister Livia Drusa who both feature more prominently in The Grass Crown: and their own growing friendship with the Servilius Caepio family resulting in a double marriage, which proves disastrous when Quintus Servilius Caepio Senior is not only accused of embezzling more gold than there was in the Roman Treasury, but also is responsible for Rome's most disastrous military defeat for generations – a defeat which so ruins the credibility of the conservative leaders of the Senate that it lets Marius into power far earlier than he expected, and for a longer time. Much of the narrative is also told in the form of letters between the protagonists – Marius, Sulla, Old Caesar and frequently their friend, Publius Rutilius Rufus – himself a man somewhat torn in allegiance: conservative by instinct, but partisan of Marius by friendship. The novel closes with Marius's sixth consulship, in which he proves not to be as adept politically as he is militarily: and the tribune whose help he needs, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, has an agenda of his own, leading to an armed insurrection which Marius himself has to put down. To cap it all, he also suffers a minor stroke during the summer, although he makes a full recovery. Tarred by association, his political career seems over: but after fighting many battles together, there is some reason for Marius and Sulla to hope that Rome will have peace for a few years. Category:Masters of Rome series Category:1990 novels Category:100s BC Category:Novels with gay themes Category:Novels set in the 2nd century BC Category:1990s LGBT novels Category:Cultural depictions of Sulla Category:Cultural depictions of Cossutia de:Die Macht und die Liebe 

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Set in the Shōryaku and Chōtoku eras of Japan's Heian period, Kai Doh Maru is set against a background of a capital under threat from disease, outlaws, and political plots. The story reworks themes from Japanese folklore, focusing on the relationship between Sakata no Kintoki (Kintarō) and Minamoto no Raikō, one of the first military Minamoto and "monster hunters" of folklore.Sansom, George (1958). 'A History of Japan to 1334'. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. The story replaces the traditional image of Kintaro - a strong, ruddy-cheeked man研究社新和英大辞典 (Kenkyusha Japanese-English Dictionary, "Kintarō" \- with that of a determined, tomboyish girl, while retaining much of the traditional character such as the carrying of an axe. Other historical figures from the period who have also become objects of folklore, such as Fujiwara no Michinaga and the rebel Taira no Masakado also make an appearance. The story begins at Mount Ashigara in Sagami Province in the Shōryakuera, where the young Kintoki is caught in a bloody family feud. Disguised as a boy by her father to protect her from her uncle's ambitions to take over the family, Kintoki's memories of her childhood indicate that she was intended as the next head of the family. She is almost killed by her uncle when he kills her family in a coup, but is rescued by the arrival of the warrior Minamoto no Raikō, who takes her back to the capital. There she grows up and joins Raikō's band of warriors, known as the "Four Heavenly Kings" Shitennō, and grows very close to Raikō, though their apparent feelings for each other remain undeclared. Five years later (in Chōtoku 1) she joins Raikō and his associates in policing the capital during a period of unrest caused by an outbreak of disease and bandits from Oeyama. Unbeknownst to Kintoki, the bandit leader Shuten Dōji is in fact her cousin, Ohni-hime. Ohni-hime is unaware that Kintoki is not a man, and has come to Heian-kyō to "rescue" him. The Oeyama bandits are secretly acting in cooperation Fujiwara no Michinaga, who hopes to use the chaos they cause to extend his control over the government. This results in the burning of the capital by Shuten Dōji and her follower Taira no Masakado. In the fighting, several of Raikō's associates are killed and Kintoki is abducted by Ohni-hime, forcing Raikō to seek her out in the bandit's Oeyama lair. 

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Simulacron 3 is the story of a virtual city (total environment simulator) for marketing research, developed by a scientist to reduce the need for opinion polls. The computer- generated city simulation is so well-programmed, that, although the inhabitants have their own consciousness, they are unaware, except for one, that they are only electronic impulses in a computer. The simulator's lead scientist, Hannon Fuller, dies mysteriously, and a co-worker, Morton Lynch, vanishes. The protagonist, Douglas Hall, is with Lynch when he vanishes, and Hall subsequently struggles to suppress his inchoate madness. As time and events unwind, he progressively grasps that his own world is probably not "real" and might be only a computer-generated simulation. 

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Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.) is a Berlin street performer. Released from prison and warned to stop drinking, he immediately goes to a familiar bar where he comforts Eva (Eva Mattes), a prostitute down on her luck, and lets her stay with him at the apartment his landlord kept for him. They are then harried and beaten by Eva's former pimps, who insult Bruno, pull his accordion apart and humiliate him by making him kneel on his grand piano with bells balanced on his back. Faced with the prospect of further harassment, Bruno and Eva decide to leave Germany and accompany Bruno's eccentric elderly neighbour Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), who was planning to move to Wisconsin to live with his American nephew Clayton. After sightseeing in New York City they buy a used car and arrive in a winter-bound, barren prairie near the fictional town of 'Railroad Flats'. There Bruno works as a mechanic with Clayton and his Native American helper, Eva as a waitress at a truck stop and Scheitz pursues his interest in animal magnetism. The pair buy a trailer which is sited on Clayton's land, but as bills mount, the bank threatens to repossess it. Eva falls back into prostitution to supplement her wages, but it is not enough to meet the payments. She tires of Bruno's drunken ramblings and deserts him by leaving with a couple of truck drivers bound for Vancouver. A man from the bank (Scott McKain) visits Bruno, who is now drinking steadily, and has him sign off on the repossession. The home is auctioned, and he and Scheitz, who is convinced that the world is conspiring against him, set off to confront the "conspiracy." Finding the bank closed, they hold up a barber shop beneath it, make off with 32 dollars and then go shopping in a small store across the street. The police arrive and arrest Scheitz for armed robbery without noticing Bruno. Holding a large frozen turkey from the store and the shotgun, Bruno returns to the garage where he works, loads the tow truck with beer, and drives along a highway into the mountains. Upon entering a small town, the truck breaking down, Bruno pulls over to a restaurant, where he tells his story to a German-speaking businessman. He then starts the truck, leaves it circling in the parking lot with a fire taking hold in the engine compartment and goes into a tourist trap across the street, where he starts a ski-lift and rides it with his frozen turkey. After Bruno disappears from view a single shot rings out. The police arrive at the scene to find the truck is now fully ablaze. The film ends with a sequence showing a chicken dancing, a duck playing a drum and a rabbit riding a toy fire truck, in coin-operated attractions that Bruno activated on his way to the ski-lift. 

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Zozo tells the story of a Lebanese boy (Imad Creidi), during the civil war, who gets separated from his family and ends up in Sweden. 

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From a region known only as the Land of Ice and Snow emerges Gulo the Savage, a vicious wolverine in command of a horde of a hundred white vermin (foxes and ermine) who eat the flesh of their enemies. After murdering his father, Dramz, Gulo assumed control of his father's territory. However, only he who possess the Walking Stone may rule, and after his father's death, Gulo's brother, Askor, steals the stone and sails to Mossflower Woods. Gulo pursues his brother with the vermin under his command. Most notably was his Captain the white fox named Shard and his mate the vixen Freeta. Although Shard was the Captain of this horde, it is Freeta that held the real power, intelligence and sway. Meanwhile, the mercenary squirrel Rakkety Tam MacBurl, along with his companion Wild Doogy Plumm, find themselves at odds with their current rulers, Squirrelking Araltum and Idga Drayqueen, both arrogant, foolish creatures who spend more time on ceremonies in their honour than ruling the kingdom. US cover of Rakkety Tam When the forces of the Squirrelking are ambushed by Gulo and 30 squirrels are slaughtered, Tam and Doogy are given the chance to escape the trivialities of the kingdom and track the invaders. Gulo had stolen the king's new Royal Banner, so Tam and Doogy are sent off to find it. The king promises to release them of their bonds after long minutes of persuasion from Idga (they had sworn allegiance to him some seasons before) if they succeed in finding, and returning, the banner. They eventually meet up with the Long Patrol and continue their hunt. The Long Patrol, however, has its own problems. Eight hares were ambushed and lost a precious drum, which was supposed to be going to Redwall Abbey as a present. It turns out that Gulo has possession of the drum as well as the banner. At Redwall, the cousin of the Abbot and his travelling companion arrive with a story and a riddle. When two maidens, Sister Armel (the infirmary sister), a squirrel, and the niece to Skipper of Otters, Brookflow (often called Brooky), try to solve the riddle, the spirit of Martin the Warrior appears to Armel, telling her to take his sword and bring it to 'the Borderer who sold and lost his sword', that being Rakkety Tam. Armel and Brooky head out into the woods, but are captured by Gulo's army. Meanwhile, a volethief named Yoofus Lightpaw is up in a tree when he sees Gulo's army beneath with the king's banner. He steals it from them and flees with it. Tam, Doogy, and the goshawk Tergen are sent to find Gulo's army. There, they find Sister Armel and Brooky held captive, and upon rescuing the two maids, Armel gives Tam the Sword of Martin, taken back from Gulo's captain, Shard. The freed captives and the rescuers then return to Redwall. When the army of hares reaches Redwall, a brief skirmish takes places in which one hare is killed and the Long Patrol Brigadier Crumshaw is wounded by arrows. Rakkety Tam takes command of the force and splits them into two groups: one to constantly harass the flesh-eating enemy, and the other to guard Redwall. Tam and Doogy take the harassment force out to find Gulo's army, encountering the Guosssim, Log-a-Log Togey, and Yoofus. They join forces to fight off Gulo. However, when crossing the pines, they lose Doogy and Yoofus. Yoofus and Doogy end up in the house of one of Yoofus' neighbours, a dormouse named Muskar Muskar, and his family, who are being held as servants by a small group of thick-headed but violent vermin. Yoofus and Doogy fight off the vermin in there. They want to go back to Yoofus's cave before continuing back to Redwall. When the two arrive, the volewife feeds the hungry travellers sausages and they meet Rockbottom, a tortoise (who is actually the Walking Stone). They head back to Redwall with Rockbottom for safekeeping. At Redwall, the other part of Gulo's army attacks the Abbey after slipping past the Long Patrol, led by Shard's mate, Freeta. It is she that is responsible for entrance of the Abbey for it was her cunning that thought up the plan. The vermin are all killed by armed Redwalls led by Armel and Brooky, but in a fierce battle, Freeta mortally wounds Crumshaw. Meanwhile, Tam and the rest of his force are buying time for their Guosim allies to clear the Broadstream of a massive fallen tree. Tam's force is ambushed on the banks of a river by Gulo's forces, resulting in the death of Corporal Butty Wopscutt. They swim for their Guosim allies who manage to free the Broadstream and pull the hares on board. Then, they lure Gulo (who is in pursuit on the recently moved tree trunk) so that he tumbles over a waterfall. Thinking Gulo is gone for good Tam's forces head for home. Surprisingly, Gulo doesn't die. The wolverine even manages to capture Doogy, who was escorting Yoofus and his wife back to Redwall. To save his friend, Tam challenges Gulo to single combat. The winner would gain possession of the 'walking stone'. In the end, Tam wins by launching Gulo onto his shield, onto which he had carved a sharp edge, and severing his head. Tam eventually marries Sister Armel, and they have a daughter, Melanda. Together, they journey back with Doogy, Brooky, and Tergen to the Squirrelking and Queen, who have had a son named Roopert. When Doogy and Tam are freed of their old bonds and the Squirrel monarchs are overthrown, two old friends of Tam's, Hinjo and Pinetooth, ask Tam and Armel to be the new king and queen, but Armel takes the crowns and throws them into the sea. Then they all continue on to Salamandastron, where Tergen stays, and all the others return to Redwall. 

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Dr. Kyoji Fujisaki, a young idealistic doctor who, during the war, contracts syphilis from the blood of a patient when he cuts himself during an operation. Contaminated with this infectious, typically shameful and then virtually incurable disease, Fujisaki returns home from the war to the clinic presided over by his obstetrician father. He comes into contact with the patient who contaminated him, in the process seeing the consequences of ignoring the disease. Treating himself in secret with Salvarsane and tormented by his sense of injustice, he rejects Misao, his fiancé of six years, without explanation, as he does not wish her to have to wait for a number of years until he is cured. Heartbroken, Misao becomes engaged to another man. She makes one last plea to Fujisaki, but he stands firm in rejecting her. 

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Deadhouse Gates opens a few months after the events of Gardens of the Moon. Unlike the previous book, which followed different groups of characters in close proximity to one another, the character threads in Deadhouse Gates are frequently separated by hundreds or thousands of miles at a time. The Malazan Empire is rocked by a cull of the nobility, many being sent to the mines of Otataral Island off the coast of the subcontinent of Seven Cities. However, Seven Cities is being consumed by a rebellion known as the Whirlwind, led by the prophetess Sha'ik from the Holy Desert of Raraku. With the cities being overrun, the Malazan forces in the city of Hissar plot a daring evacuation overland to the Malazan continental capital of Aren. The Malazan 7th Army, under the command of the legendary Coltaine of the Crow Clan of the Wickans, is tasked with escorting 50,000 refugees some 1,500 miles to safety. This legendary march becomes known as the Chain of Dogs and will become part of the legends of Seven Cities. Meanwhile, the assassin Kalam embarks on a dangerous mission and a group of travellers from Genabackis arrive in Seven Cities on their own mysterious errands... 

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Memories of Ice takes place simultaneously with the events of Deadhouse Gates, beginning about four months after the events of Gardens of the Moon. Dujek's 2nd army allegedly goes renegade, with Whiskeyjack as second in command, to join Anomander Rake and Caladan Brood to attack the cannibalistic and wantonly destructive Pannion Domin led by the Jaghut Pannion Seer. The White Face Barghast join as well after Trotts proves himself in single combat against a key chief's son. The chief's other children discover that the Barghast are descended from T'lan Imass who didn't bind themselves to the Ritual of Tellann and release their gods from Capustan. The first major battle is at Capustan, where the Fener- worshipping Grey Swords stave off the brunt of the assault until Dujek and company arrive. Grey Sword Shield Anvil Itkovian takes the suffering of the tens of thousands of dead upon himself, even though Fener's no longer available (after the events in Deadhouse Gates that take place shortly before) to relieve him, and the Grey Swords turn to the other gods of war for new sponsorship (Togg and Fandery). Caravan guard Gruntle becomes the Mortal Sword of Treach when his friend Stonny is raped and beaten at Capustan, and he joins the campaign against the Pannion. Toc the Younger, having disappeared during Gardens of the Moon, emerges from the warren of chaos through a rent near Morn with the elder god Togg present within and occasionally possessing him to meet Onos T'oolan and Draconus's daughter, Lady Envy, her pets, one of whom has the elder god and Togg's long-lost lover Fanderay present within, and her Seguleh swordsmen thralls. Lady Envy's group attacks the Pannion from a different angle and drives the Seer to Coral, though not before Toc infiltrates the Pannion and is then captured and tortured by the Seer. The Bridgeburners reach Coral first and blow their way into the city with Moranth help while Quick Ben, with the Bargast Shaman Talamandas (whom he rescues from a spirit trap) and the support of Hood, evades the Pannion poisoning of the warrens in order to trap the Seer. Whiskeyjack is lost in the battle when Kallor—who as emperor tens of thousands of years earlier killed the population of a continent rather than letting them rebel (the bodies now form the imperial warren) -- betrays the attack when promised the position of king in the new House of Chains by the Crippled God, who is sponsoring the Pannion from behind the scenes. Anomander Rake submerges Moon's Spawn in the ocean off Coral to stealthily approach and crush the Pannion's redoubt in the end. The Mhybe—Tattersail, Bellurdan, and Nightchill's host Silverfox's mother—ages rapidly and thinks herself ruined when Silverfox appears not to love her, but Kruppe persuades them to reconcile in the end after Silverfox with Kruppe's help prepares the warren of Tellann—seeded to fertility with Itkovian's memories of the pain of the T’lan Imass who gather to Silverfox’s call—to receive Togg and Fanderay as lords of the Beast Hold. The Pannion Seer turns out to have been driven to insanity and mad vengeance by his and his sister's entrapment when hidden by Tool's sister Kilava in the rift at Morn to protect them from Pran Chole's intended genocide of the Jaghut hundreds of thousands of years earlier. The Seer uses the K'Chain Che'Malle Matron, who was freed from the rift when he and his sister were put there, to torture Toc and to generate K'Chain soldiers. When Paran as Master of the Deck chooses mercy, Quick Ben helps free the Seer's sister from the rift. The Seer then cooperates in using his Omtose Phellack warren's ice to slow Burn's poisoning by the Crippled God. For restoring Fanderay to him, Togg puts Toc's soul into the Seer's servant Anaster's soulless body and restores Tool's mortality and flesh. Moon's Spawn is greatly damaged during the attack on the Pannion, and the fallen Bridgeburners, along with the leader of the Black Moranth, are laid to rest inside it. The remaining Bridgeburners (including Paran who with Dujek's help is listed among the casualties) retire to Darujhistan to open a bar, where the epilogue shows them listening to the Imperial Historian Duiker tell the story of the Chain of Dogs. Sideplots involve the Mott Irregulars, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach's necromancy and repeated drubbings by Quick Ben and the Bridgeburners, love emerging between Whiskeyjack and the Tiste Andii Korlat, and the Seguleh and Tool having to be repeatedly dissuaded from testing their prowess against one another by Lady Envy. 

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House of Chains takes place immediately after the events of Deadhouse Gates on the subcontinent of Seven Cities. The Chain of Dogs - the evacuation of 50,000 Malazan civilians across 1,500 miles of hostile territory - has ended in the tragic loss of the entire 7th army and its heroic commander, Coltaine. However, with their sacrifice was bought the lives of nearly 30,000 refugees. Meanwhile, the Chain of Dogs has become a legend spreading across Seven Cities, cowing even those responsible for its destruction. Now Adjunct Tavore Paran has arrived at the head of the 14th Army, largely consisting of untried recruits. Their mission is to advance into the heart of the Holy Desert Raraku, the very heart of the rebellion known as the Whirlwind, and destroy Sha'ik and her forces once and for all. The rebels outnumber the Malazans vastly. However, all is not well in Sha'ik's camp and internal conflicts threatens to destroy her army before the Malazans can. Meanwhile, a mighty warrior named Karsa Orlong descends from his mountain fastness on Genabackis, beginning a journey that will live in legend, and the thief Crokus and assassin Apsalar find themselves drawn into a desperate struggle for control of the Throne of Shadow. Finally, a warrior named Trull Sengar is rescued from certain death with news of a terrible new foe arising to trouble all the world... 

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Midnight Tides takes place on a continent called Lether, located on the far side of the world to the Malazan Empire and unknown to it. The book is set in a time before the first book in the series, Gardens of the Moon. 

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The Bonehunters begins two months after the events of House of Chains. The Malazan Fourteenth Army has destroyed the army of the Whirlwind, and Adjunct Tavore Paran has executed Sha'ik. The Fourteenth is now pressing westward, pursuing the remnants of the Whirlwind rebellion (under Leoman of the Flails), as it seeks refuge in the fortress city of Y'Ghatan, where the Malazan Empire had previously faced its greatest defeat. Meanwhile, Onearm's Host, restored to the favour of Empress Laseen, has landed on Seven Cities' north coast to complete the task of subduing the rebellion, but a deadly plague has been unleashed. Ganoes Paran, the new Master of the Deck of Dragons, arrives from Genabackis to help deal with the chaos. Elsewhere, the balance of power is shifting in the Malazan Imperial Court, and strange black ships have been sighted in the waters surrounding Quon Tali and Seven Cities. The quest of the expeditionary force of the Letherii Empire to find warriors worthy of facing Emperor Rhulad Sengar in battle is about to be answered twice over. 

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The main narrative thread that runs through the opera is the story of the life of Abraham, as it is told in the various religious texts, and how this story is now understood and interpreted, using modern-day accounts by individual people from three different major religious and cultural contexts. During the individual interviews, Steve Reich and Beryl Korot asked questions such as "Who is Abraham?", "Who is Sarah?" and "Who is Ishmael?" and recorded answers that were given by Israeli, Palestinian and American interviewees. These three groups of people viewed the story of Abraham/Ibrahim and his immediate family in varying ways. Brief spoken extracts from the interviews were used both as they were recorded during the interviews, but also as repeated musical phrases. The melodic phrases used in the opera are all taken directly from the intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm of the natural spoken phrases and sentences used by the individuals interviewed. In other words, the musical phrases are based on the prosody which can be heard in the phrases and sentences spoken by the individuals. Images of the interviewees are also shown on an array of video screens. 

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Challenger sends telegrams asking his three companions from The Lost World— Edward Malone, Lord John Roxton, and Professor Summerlee— to join him at his home outside London, and instructs each of them to 'bring oxygen'. During their journey there, they see people's behaviour become excitable and erratic. On arrival they are ushered into a sealed room, along with Challenger and his wife. In the course of his researches into various phenomena, Challenger has predicted that the Earth is moving into a belt of poisonous ether which, based on its effect on the people of Sumatra earlier in the day, he expects to stifle humanity. Challenger seals them in the room with cylinders of oxygen, which he (correctly) believes will counter the effect of the ether. Cover of a later printing of the Arthur Conan Doyle novella The Poison Belt The five wait out the Earth's passage through the poison belt as they watch the world outside, human and animal, die and machines run amok. (According to Victorian values—or to Doyle's understanding of them—Challenger's servants are left outside the sealed room, and they continue to perform their duties until the ether overtakes them.) Finally, the last of the oxygen cylinders is emptied, and they open a window, ready to face death. To their surprise, they do not die, and conclude the Earth has now passed through the poison belt. They journey through the dead countryside in Challenger's car, finally arriving in London. They encounter only one survivor, an elderly, bed-ridden woman prescribed oxygen for her health. After returning to Challenger's house, they discover that the effect of the ether is temporary, and the world reawakens with no knowledge that they have lost any time at all. Eventually Challenger and his companions manage to convince the world what happened— a task made easier by the tremendous amount of death and destruction caused by runaway machines and fires that took place while the world was asleep—and humanity is shocked into placing a higher value on life. 

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Notorious womanizer Michael James (Peter O'Toole) wants to be faithful to his fiancée Carole Werner (Romy Schneider), but every woman he meets seems to fall in love with him, including neurotic exotic dancer Liz Bien (Paula Prentiss) and parachutist Rita (Ursula Andress) who accidentally lands in his car. His psychoanalyst, Dr. Fritz Fassbender (Peter Sellers), cannot help, since he is stalking patient Renée Lefebvre (Capucine), who in turn longs for Michael. Carole, meanwhile, decides to make Michael jealous by flirting with his nervous wreck of a friend, Victor Shakapopulis (Woody Allen). A catastrophe appears on the horizon when all the characters check into a quaint hideaway hotel in the French countryside for the weekend, unaware of each other's presence. Michael tries to fend off Renée's advances by steering Fassbender her way, but Fassbender's wife Anna is determined to keep him to herself. By the time Michael finally is able to meet Carole's parents and agree to settle down, he and Fassbender both catch the eye of yet another young woman, creating the distinct possibility of the whole thing happening all over again. 

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One night, an American special forces team invades Saddam Hussein's (Haleva) palace and a nearby prison camp to rescue captured soldiers from Operation Desert Storm and to eliminate Saddam, but they find the Iraqis prepared for them, and the entire rescue team is captured. This failed operation turns out to be the latest in a series of rescue attempts which were foiled by the Iraqis, and consequently the advisors of President Benson (Admiral Benson in the previous film, played by Bridges) suspect sabotage in their own ranks. Colonel Denton Walters (Crenna) suggests to gain the aid of war hero Topper Harley (Sheen) for the next mission, but Topper has retired from the United States Navy and become a Buddhist in a small Thai village. Walters and Michelle Huddleston (Bakke), CIA, arrive and try to persuade him to come out of retirement in order to rescue the imprisoned soldiers and the previous rescue parties. Topper initially refuses, but when yet another rescue mission (this one, in turn, led by Walters) goes awry, he agrees to lead a small group of soldiers into Iraq. He is joined by Williams (Colyar), Rabinowitz (Stiles) and Harbinger (Ferrer), the sole escapee of the prior rescue mission and whom Topper suspects to be the wanted saboteur. They parachute into an Iraqi jungle close to the heavily guarded hostage camp and set off to meet their contact, who turns out to be Topper's former love, Ramada (Golino). Ramada guides them to a fishing boat that she prepared for their transportation. As they move towards the camp, she and Topper reminisce, and she explains that she was married before she met him. When she was informed that her husband, Dexter (Atkinson), was still alive and a prisoner in Iraq, she volunteered to participate in his liberation, but was instructed to keep this strictly confidential, forcing her to break up with Topper just as they were ready to start a new life together; this also led to Topper's decision to retire. Topper's team proceeds to the prison camp disguised as river fishermen, but a confrontation with an Iraqi patrol boat thwarts them. When President Benson hears of the apparent failure of another mission, he takes matters into his own hands and joins additional forces in Iraq. However, Topper and his teammates have survived, and soon reach the Iraqi hostage camp. In the course of the operation, the alarm is raised and a gunfight ensues, during which Topper finds out that Harbinger is not the saboteur, but has merely lost faith in fighting, and manages to motivate him. After the prisoners are freed, Topper decides to rescue Dexter, who has been brought to Saddam's palace. While the squad evacuates the hostages, Topper enters Saddam's palace and runs into the dictator himself, who pulls out his machine pistol and commands Topper to surrender. Topper disarms Saddam, and they engage in a sword fight. President Benson arrives and orders Topper to rescue Dexter while Benson and Saddam continue the duel. Benson defeats Saddam by spraying him with a fire extinguisher, upon which he and his dog freeze and crack into pieces, only to subsequently melt, combine and reform as Saddam with his dog's head, fur, nose and ears. In the meantime, Topper manages to find and liberate Dexter, but is forced to carry him out on his shoulder as the Iraqis have tied Dexter's shoelaces together. The squad heads back to the army helicopter, where Ramada, after a complicated revelation involving unfounded jealousy, reveals and arrests Michelle as the saboteur who betrayed the previous rescue attempts to the Iraqis. Dexter arrives with Topper and insists on taking a picture of him and Ramada, but backs away too far and topples over a cliff. President Benson joins the escapees, and the evacuation team lifts off; Saddam is about to shoot down the chopper when Topper and Ramada get rid of extra weight in it by pushing a piano out the open door, which crushes him. Topper and Ramada kiss as they ride off into the sunset. 

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Jackson Smith (Chestnut), Brian Palmer (Bellamy), Derrick West (Hughley) and Terry White (Moore) are lifelong friends since childhood. The film has separate subplots with each character, showing how their friendships binds them. Jackson, a physician, struggles with commitment issues and often has nightmares of being shot by a bride. When working through his issues with a therapist, she suggests he meet a woman that night and "give his heart to her." He soon meets a beautiful freelance photographer (Union) who makes Jackson realize that he may be capable of true love and commitment. When he finds out that Denise once dated his father, his new outlook on love takes a turn. Brian, an attorney, realizes that his chronic womanizing is catching up to him in ways he didn't imagine when a former lover (also the judge in a case he is currently working) sends him to jail. He makes a vow to not date African-American women because he believes that they carry unnecessary drama. Brian is working to gain custody of his younger brother who currently lives in a affection-less household with his mother. Derrick, the only married member of the group, loves his wife (Jones) and daughter, but is struggling with the idea of his wife not giving him the type of sex he desires. After many attempts to convince his wife that pleasing your partner is an important part of a successful marriage, he and his wife separate. In addition to wanting more in the bedroom, Derrick is trying to convince his wife to let his ailing mother live in their home. Terry, a former womanizer who is tired of playing the field and ready to settle down, is preparing to marry his girlfriend of two months, Bebe (Dalian), despite the warnings of his friends who feel that he is rushing into the commitment. As his wedding day fast approaches, he'll have to decide he is truly ready to make the leap into the rest of his life. 

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The World Trade Center, seen here in February 2001, was prominently featured in the episode. At Moe's Tavern, Moe informs Homer and his friends that one of them must be a designated driver, and Barney loses the choosing draw. After Barney drives the drunken men home in Homer's car, Homer allows him to use it to drive himself home, expecting Barney to return it the following morning. In his distressed state, Barney disappears with the car. Two months later, Barney returns to Moe's Tavern, unable to recall where he left the car. Homer later receives a letter from the New York City government, which informs him that his car has been found parked in the World Trade Center plaza and will be destroyed if not picked up in 72 hours. Homer reveals to the family that he had once been to New York before when he was 17 years old, and had a horrible experience. Marge and the children persuade Homer to go retrieve the car, and he reluctantly agrees. When the family arrives in Manhattan, they decide to split up. Upon arrival at his car, Homer discovers it has been issued many parking tickets and has been wheel clamped. While waiting for a parking officer to come and remove the clamp, Homer drinks an excessive amount of crab juice from a food vendor and needs to urinate, but is afraid to leave his car behind. Several hours later, he rushes into the restroom at the South Tower's indoor observation deck, but discovers that it is out of order and must use the one at the top of the North Tower. The officer arrives while he is away from the car; finding no one present, he issues another ticket and leaves, to Homer's extreme frustration. Meanwhile, the rest of the family tours the Statue of Liberty, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Empire State Building. Bart leaves the group to visit the offices of Mad magazine, and is in awe when he sees Alfred E. Neuman. The family attends a Broadway musical about the Betty Ford Clinic, and then takes a carriage through Central Park to where they are planning to meet Homer. Upon returning to the car, Homer realizes he must reach Central Park, pick up the family, and leave before nightfall. Ignoring the wheel clamp, he tries to drive away but destroys the car's fender. He steals a jackhammer from a road construction crew and uses it to remove the clamp, but damages the car further as well. Homer races to Central Park and reunites with his family. While driving back to Springfield, the family reflects on their wonderful time, while Homer's hatred for New York remains as debris from a garbage truck flies through the car's broken windshield and splatters across his face. 

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Music superstar Bud Parks, along with his statuesque wife, Alice, and their approximately eight-year-old daughter, Terri Jo, return to his small hometown, fictional Doak City, Indiana, for his paternal grandfather's 80th birthday. Initially, the visit is light-hearted and Bud receives a hero's welcome from many of his relatives and fans. But what is supposed to be a three-day visit of fun quickly turns into much more. At the birthday party, Bud's high school sweetheart and now sister-in-law, P.J., invites Bud out for a walk, which is met with curious suspicion by Bud's father, Speck. P.J. confesses she has sex with Speck, which is met with shock and disapproval by Bud. Speck, a successful poultry farmer, is shown early on to be a chauvinistic and dominating womanizer. He fathered an illegitimate son but his wife, Marian, stayed with him. Speck refers to himself as a sire and the women who bore his children as fillies. Over time he is revealed to be dominating, violent, exploitive and shameless, to the point of even making a pass at Bud's wife. Bud and Alice seem to have a good marriage, and she is clearly devoted. But after learning of P.J.'s affair with Speck, Bud has sex with P.J. as well. P.J. seems to view her sexual encounters as conquests and take pride in simultaneously having three Parks men as lovers. She also seems to view her promiscuity, and the need to keep it secret, as a source of excitement for a housewife and mother who resides in what she considers to be a boring town. The three days turn into several weeks. Bud's feelings of both love and lust for P.J. are rekindled, and he neglects Alice. Already disillusioned by the music business and thinking about leaving it, he realizes that he's a small-town man at heart and wants to stay in Doak City, where many of his relatives still reside. His anger toward his father also escalates. California-bred Alice continues to love her husband but quickly becomes tired of small town life and his neglect. She accuses Bud of committing adultery. He doesn't deny it and she leaves with Terri Jo. Bud tries to get P.J. back as the woman of his life. She reveals that she wanted that many years earlier, but that he wouldn't make a commitment, and it's too late now. Frustrated and angry, Bud confronts Speck in a restaurant. Speck shows no interest or sympathy in his son's problems but expresses displeasure in having received none of the millions of dollars Bud has made in music. On the basis that he "sired" Bud, Speck claims to be entitled to some of Bud's money. Bud warns Speck to make no further sexual advances at Alice and, in a rage, knocks the food and tableware off the table. As Bud gets up to leave, he is viciously beaten by Speck. Feeling like he's hit rock bottom, Bud gets drunk and performs a stunt from his wild youth. He lies in a cage in the back of a pickup truck and has one of his friends push the cage onto the road while the truck is moving. He wakes up lying in a hospital bed wearing a brace on his neck and a cast on his right arm. Standing beside his bed are P.J., his sister Sally Cutler and his paternal grandmother. Alice returns and seems willing to take Bud back if he will be honest with her. Having been rejected by P.J. and humbled by his father and the accident, Bud now realizes what's most important in his life. He and Alice reconcile. 

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Veronica Guerin, a crime reporter for the Sunday Independent, becomes aware of how much Dublin's illegal drug trade is encroaching upon the lives of its working class, especially the children, and vows to expose the men responsible. Guerin begins by interviewing the pre-pubescent addicts who shoot up on the street or in abandoned buildings in the housing estates. Her investigation leads her to major suppliers and John Traynor, a notable source of information about the criminal underworld. Traynor is willing to assist her to an extent but is not above misleading her in order to protect himself from nefarious drug lord John Gilligan. To steer her away from Gilligan, Traynor suggests Gerry Hutch, a criminal known as The Monk, is in charge of the operation. Guerin pursues Hutch and discovers he is not involved. As Guerin nears the truth, she and her family become targets. A bullet fired through a window in her home as a warning fails to stop her. She is then shot in the leg, and her young son Cathal is threatened. Her husband Graham, mother Bernie, and brother Jimmy implore her to stop, but when Guerin confronts Gilligan at his home and is savagely beaten, she becomes more determined to expose him. Rather than press charges, which would necessitate her removal from the story, she forges ahead with the investigation. On 26 June 1996, Guerin appears in court to respond to parking tickets and speeding penalties that she had ignored. She is given a nominal fine of IR£100. En route home she calls her mother and then her husband to report the good news. She is speaking to her office while stopped at traffic light on the Naas Dual Carriageway when two men riding a motorcycle pull up beside her. The driver breaks the window of her car and shoots her six times. The two flee and dispose of the bike and gun in a nearby canal. Guerin is mourned by her family, friends, associates and the country. Her violent death results in the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau, and Gilligan, along with several of his henchmen, are tried and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. The epilogue states that "Veronica Guerin's writing turned the tide in the drug war. Her murder galvanised Ireland into action. Thousands of people took to the streets in weekly anti-drug marches, which drove the dealers out of Dublin and forced the drug barons underground. Within a week of her death, in an emergency session of the Parliament, the Government altered the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland to allow the High Court to freeze the assets of suspected drug barons." 

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The novel's protagonist Rennie Wilford is a travel reporter. After surviving breast cancer, she travels to the fictional Caribbean island St. Antoine to carry out research for an article. The island, however, is on the brink of revolution. Rennie tries to stay away from politics, but is drawn into events through her romance with Paul, a key player in the uprising, and ends up in a survival struggle. 

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The novel's protagonist, Joan Foster, is a romance novelist who has spent her life running away from difficult situations. The novel alternates between flashbacks from the past and scenes from the present. Through flashbacks, the reader sees her first as an overweight child whose mother constantly criticizes her, and later, hiding her career, her past as the mistress of a Polish count, and her affair with a performance artist called The Royal Porcupine, from her bipolar husband Arthur."Read it for its gracefulness, for its good story, for its help in your fantasy life". The Globe and Mail, September 4, 1976. In the present, she has recently published a volume of feminist poetry which becomes a breakthrough success and is overwhelmed by the pressures of sudden fame. Joan panics after receiving a blackmail attempt from someone who has found out about her secrets. With the help of two acquaintances, she fakes her own death and then flees to Italy."A contrary critic takes a crack at Lady Oracle: The Globe reviewer loved Atwood's latest novel. So did others. But what of the view from abroad? We asked a noted British critic." The Globe and Mail, October 9, 1976. 

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In Saint Petersburg, Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin works as a titular councillor (rank 9 in the Table of Ranks established by Peter the Great.), a low-level bureaucrat struggling to succeed. Golyadkin has a formative discussion with his Doctor Rutenspitz, who fears for his sanity and tells him that his behaviour is dangerously antisocial. He prescribes "cheerful company" as the remedy. Golyadkin resolves to try this, and leaves the office. He proceeds to a birthday party for Klara Olsufyevna, the daughter of his office manager. He was uninvited, and a series of faux pas lead to his expulsion from the party. On his way home through a snowstorm, he encounters a man who looks exactly like him, his double. The following two thirds of the novel then deals with their evolving relationship. At first, Golyadkin and his double are friends, but Golyadkin Jr. proceeds to attempt to take over Sr.'s life, and they become bitter enemies. Because Golyadkin Jr. has all the charm, unctuousness and social skills that Golyadkin Sr. lacks, he is very well-liked among the office colleagues. At the story's conclusion, Golyadkin Sr. begins to see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz. 

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On the Kidabanesee reserve in Northern Ontario lives Silas Crow (Ryan Black), a young man looking for direction in life. He is uncertain about taking an automobile mechanic's course in college. His general confusion with life is most readily evident in his appearance. He wears an old, ratty black fedora, a strange assortment of cargo pants, as well as a long, black trench coat. Frank Fencepost (Adam Beach) is Crow's best friend, and Sadie Maracle (Jennifer Podemski) is his girlfriend. A young girl from the reserve is murdered by Clarence Gaskill (Hugh Dillon), the white man's sentence is light; leading the community to demand for justice or vengeance. 

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Captain Josiah Peabody, United States Navy, in command of the USS Delaware, is the viewpoint character. Peabody has served in the Navy since its earliest days; he also overcame alcoholism by sheer will power, having come from a family of alcoholics. To help save his brother from the same fate, he ships him aboard as captain's clerk with the rank of midshipman. The Delaware escapes from blockaded New York City in the winter of 1813-1814 and sails south to destroy British commerce in the Caribbean. In doing so, a French vessel appears, and neither the Americans nor the British know that Napoleon has surrendered, the French monarchy has been restored, and France is now at peace with Britain. The French vessel carries the new Royalist, French governor of a Caribbean Island, and some of his beautiful relatives. The Delaware proceeds to capture a British post-office packet carrying the pay for the British Army in Canada, then raids several islands, including St. Kitts. In the course of action, off the weather shore of Martinique, Delaware encounters the frigate HMS Calypso, Sir Hugh Davenant, commanding, accompanied by two smaller ships. The action between the four is interrupted when the French inform both parties that they will not allow French neutrality to be violated. Both belligerents are trapped by a rule of international law which requires twenty-four hours to pass before ships of one belligerent power can sail after a ship of the opposing side can sail. Davenant, a man of hot-tempered speech, insists he sail first, because he cannot allow the Americans a free hand at sea; to do so would lead to his court-martial. Peabody replies "We have courts-martial in our service, too." The Governor suggests anchoring overnight. The next morning, at the exact minute of dawn, both the Calypso and the Delaware cast loose and set sail for international waters. They are so closely matched that the French fire on both ships, warning them to come about. This time, the Governor suggests an armistice of a week. During the week, Peabody falls in love with Anne de Villebois, the daughter of the Governor, and marries her. Unfortunately, his young brother, who hates the rigid discipline of naval life, deserts the ship and marries a wealthy French widow. Both sides accept a temporary agreement to work together to eliminate a pirate who is plaguing local commerce under the assumption neither frigate can chase him. Peabody is wounded, though not seriously; Davenant insists that his surgeon examine the wound. Both ships return to Martinique under the terms of the previous armistice. During this period, two British sailors desert the Calypso for the Delaware. Davenant requests that they be returned, but Peabody must refuse. Davenant comments that American deserters marry rich planters, especially if they are captain's brothers. Peabody demands a duel. The duel is fought. Neither man is wounded, to each other's relief. Peabody then challenges Davenant to a ship-to-ship duel, as the only way the Delaware can be free to take action against a British convoy forming to attack New Orleans. The novel ends with the Americans and British learning that peace has been declared in their war. The American and British captains both end up marrying beautiful French girls, becoming friends and brothers-in-law. 

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The hero of The Good Shepherd is Commander Krause, the captain of the fictional US Navy Mahan-class destroyer USS Keeling in World War II. Krause is in overall command of an escort force protecting an Atlantic convoy in the Battle of the Atlantic, shepherding it through the Mid-Atlantic gap where no antisubmarine aircraft are able to defend convoys. He finds himself in a difficult position. The voyage in question occurs early in 1942, shortly after the United States's entry into the war. Although he is a career Navy officer, with many years of seniority, this is Krause's first wartime mission. The captains of the other vessels in the escort group are junior to him in rank, and much younger, but they have been at war for over two years. The story covers 13 watches (52 hours) aboard the ship's bridge and is told in third person entirely from Krause's point of view as he fights to save his ship, detailing his mood swings from his intense and focused excitement and awareness during combat to his resulting fatigue, depression, and self-doubt as his self-perceived inferiority and inexperience to the other captains under his command troubles him (although as the story progresses he is shown to be quite capable). He broods over his career and the wife who left him, partly because of his strict devotion to duty. He is troubled when the press of duty forces him to neglect his prayers (unlike most of Forester's other heroes, Krause is devout). He is troubled by recollections that the Navy review board had twice passed him over for promotion, returning a judgement of fitted and retained due to little or no opportunity in the prewar Navy. His promotion to Commander only came when the United States entered the war, leading him to fear that he may be unsuited to his command. The book also focuses on the intense combat between the Keeling and multiple U-boats, with the Keeling eventually racking up multiple kills, and on the ship's daring rescue missions as the convoy increasingly falls prey to the U-boats, all in a race against time to escape the undefended stretches of the Atlantic. The book is a rich, detailed accounting of Naval warfare, ship handling, and the inner logic of an experienced officer wrestling with the many minute judgments necessary to maintain rigid discipline during conditions of relentless tedium punctuated with extreme danger. 

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David and Linda Howard are typical 1980s yuppies in California who are fed up with their lifestyle. He works in an advertising agency and she for a department store. But after he fails to receive a promotion he was counting on and is instead asked to transfer to the firm's New York office, David angrily insults his boss and is fired. He coaxes his wife to quit her job as well and seek a new adventure. The Howards decide to sell their house, liquidate their assets, drop out of society, "like in Easy Rider", and travel the country in a Winnebago recreational vehicle. They leave L.A. with a "nest egg" of a hundred thousand dollars but do not get very far. The plan goes awry when Linda loses all their savings playing roulette at the Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas, where a desperate David tries in vain to persuade a casino manager to give the money back as a publicity gimmick. With nowhere to go, the couple quarrels at Hoover Dam, then ends up in Safford, Arizona. David unsuccessfully applies for a delivery job at a local pharmacy and resorts to an employment agency. After a counselor obnoxiously reminds him that he was fired from his high-paying job in advertising, David accepts the best position available — as a crossing guard, taunted by local school kids. Linda, meanwhile, finds employment as the assistant manager at the local Der Wienerschnitzel, working under a kid half her age. Only a few days after beginning their pursuit of the dream of dropping out of society, David and Linda are living in a trailer park, almost broke, working dead-end jobs where they are accountable to brats. They decide that it is better to get back to their old lifestyle as soon as possible. They point the Winnebago toward New York, where David begs for his old job back. 

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Cincinnati college senior Matt Larkin seems to have a picture perfect life: he is well- liked at his college, from which he is soon to graduate, has a fiancée, friends, parties and good times. But when Matt meets Jewel, his carefully constructed house of cards falls apart and changes him forever. Matt's content with his very proper fiancée and his safe life, so when his best friend Tipton relates a story of a night spent in a rough country house filled with seedy characters, beer, music and women, Matt initially scoffs at the idea of visiting. However, as he ponders his imminent marriage, he decides to check it out–no harm done, just a little fun before life gets serious. The two drive out to the house, expecting a wild party. Instead, they find only the aftermath of the previous night—cigarette butts and bottles strewn everywhere, a solitary biker playing pool, and a woman's muffled giggle coming from upstairs. Disappointed, Matt goes to fetch a beer for Tipton and in doing so, in the kitchen, meets Jewel. Jewel is all mystery and trailer park at the same time. She's a poor Kentucky girl, obviously uneducated, yet Matt is instantly drawn to her. He returns to seek her out and the attraction they share is obvious. Despite their social differences, Matt is completely infatuated. His life soon does a 180. He breaks off his engagement, sneaks out at night and stops seeing his friends. However Matt is yet to figure out who exactly Jewel is and discovers the secrets she is hiding (including an abusive husband and stepfather, the shady people that hang around the house, as well as the fact she is underage). As a result, the two worlds collide and it seems they are doomed by circumstance. After Matt has a run in with Jewel's spouse, the ultra-seedy Green, Matt and Jewel break up. Jewel separates from Green, eventually meeting someone new at college. 

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The novel opens with Brown, wounded and dying, on fictional Resolution Island in the Galápagos Islands. The story is then told in flashback. The first part of the story tells of Brown's birth, as a result of a liaison between his mother, Agatha Brown, and a Royal Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Richard Saville-Samarez. It describes his upbringing in late Victorian and Edwardian England, with Agatha as an unmarried mother pretending to be a widow, and her instilling into him of a sense of duty to the Navy and to his country. As soon as he is old enough (fifteen years of age), Brown joins the Navy, and at the start of World War I is serving on the cruiser HMS Charybdis at Singapore. In the second half of the story Charybdis is sunk by the fictional German armored cruiser SMS Ziethen in the eastern Pacific, and Brown, along with two severely-wounded men, is picked up as POWs by the German ship. As the Ziethen was damaged in the exchange, her captain postpones his commerce raiding mission to Australasian waters, and has to find a deserted anchorage to repair his ship. In the novel, he chooses the fictional Resolution Island in the Galápagos Islands. The resourceful Brown steals a rifle and a small amount of ammunition, water and food, escapes, and makes his way ashore, where he is able to pick off exposed crew members who are trying to repair the ship's damaged hull. As her captain has already careened his vessel, the Ziethen's guns cannot be brought to bear on Brown, and German landing parties are sent ashore to hunt him down. In Forester's description, Resolution Island is an almost-impenetrable tangle of sun-blasted sharp-edged lava blocks covered with cacti, making it extremely difficult for the Germans to locate Brown. Brown is able to delay the repairs for two days, but is eventually mortally wounded by a lucky rifle shot from a German sailor as the crew is being recalled to the ship. He never learns that his actions delayed the Ziethen long enough to ensure that she is intercepted and destroyed by a pursuing Royal Navy force. Coincidentally, the senior officer of the British force is the now Captain Saville-Samarez, Brown's father, although they never know of each other's existence. 

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There is a saying in the land that someone who drinks the Wine of the Gods before he is ready is only half a man thereafter. Amatus, the prince, manages to swig down a significant amount of the Wine of the Gods, and his entire left half vanishes. His father, the normally gentle King Boniface, orders the executions of the four people responsible for this travesty—the maid, the alchemist, the witch, and the captain of the guard—and then begins the long and arduous process of interviewing to fill these four positions. A year and a day later, four strangers arrive in the kingdom. This is a magical time, and noted by all as being very auspicious. The strangers are hired by the king and become known as the prince's Companions. The rest of the tale deals with Amatus's growth into manhood, kingship, and love. It is filled with adventure, laughter, tragedy, unexpected reunions and royal pomp. 

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The protagonist of the novel is Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, the recorded personality of a dead woman which has become the property of a corporation that intends to sell it as entertainment. Rebel escapes by taking over the body of Eucrasia Walsh, a woman who rents herself out for temporary testing of new wetware programming. While escaping the corporation Eucrasia's latent personality is beginning to reassert itself. Rebel's adventures take her throughout the widely colonised solar system. She initially lives in canister worlds orbiting the Sun in a trojan orbit, where she sometimes works removing bioengineered weeds (vacuum flowers, the space- tolerant flora of the title) from the canisters' exterior ports. Since the recording omits most of her memories, she must rely on strangers to help her survive, though she cannot trust any of them. Rebel meets and falls in love with Wyeth, a leader whose personality was reprogrammed into a team of four complementary personas. Together they form an uneasy alliance with The Comprise, the hive mind which rules Earth, and encounter Dysonworlders, who live on genetically engineered artificial comets (Dyson trees). 

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Georgie Soloway (Dustin Hoffman) is a rock music composer who experiences personal conflicts when trying to track down a man named Harry Kellerman, who had been spreading outrageous lies about him. Soloway is a rich and successful man who lives in a fancy penthouse apartment and seemingly has everything, but he's beginning to think he is losing his mind; he can't sleep, women he's dated are rejecting him after getting calls from the mysterious "Harry", and he fantasizes committing suicide by leaping off his balcony. Regular visits to his psychiatrist are not helping. At night he struggles with insomnia and can only sleep when his long-suffering accountant comes over and reads his earnings statements to him. When he does sleep, he dreams again about jumping to his death. As Georgie tries to make sense of his life, he thinks back on his experiences. Although Georgie is a love song writer, he's never had a successful, lasting relationship. His first love, Ruthie, broke up with him after he got her pregnant and she had to have an abortion. He later met a kind waitress named Gloria whom he also got pregnant; he married Gloria and they had two children, but then he cheated on her and she asked for a divorce. More recently, he met an aging actress named Allison (Barbara Harris) who had just miserably failed an audition for a rock musical. Allison turned out to have a lot in common with him, including a failed marriage and thoughts of suicide. When he learns it's her birthday, he takes her for a ride in his private plane and they spend one romantic evening together. Georgie visits his aging father, who runs a small restaurant and has always had a dream of opening a bigger place. Georgie asks him why he doesn't move elsewhere and open the large restaurant of his dreams with the checks Georgie has sent him, instead of always sending back the checks. His father explains that he is starting to suffer the effects of arteriosclerosis and that it's too late for him to open a new restaurant now, because he will soon die. Georgie goes for a ride over New York City in his private plane and looks for the cemetery where his father said he wanted to be buried. Then he tries to call first Ruthie and then Allison on the sky phone in the plane. Neither of the women recognize his voice, so he hangs up, but not before revealing that he himself is "Harry Kellerman." At the end, Georgie is shown crashing his private plane into the buildings of Manhattan, then cheerfully skiing away with his psychiatrist. 

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The hero is Matthew Dodd, a rifleman in the 95th Regiment of Foot of the British Army. The novel takes place in Portugal early in the Peninsular War. The British had sent a small force of about 10,000 men to the aid of her ally, Portugal. Rather than face the overwhelming numbers of the opposing French forces under Marshal André Masséna, the British commander, Lord Wellington, secretly constructed the Lines of Torres Vedras and withdrew behind them, leaving the French force no options but to lay siege to the lines, or retreat. For three months the French encamped outside the lines, waiting for reinforcements from the other side of the Tagus River, but in the end hunger and disease forced them to retreat. During the British withdrawal, Dodd becomes separated from his regiment and is cut off from the British forces, with the entire French army between him and the lines at Torres Vedras. In an attempt to get around the French, he heads for the Tagus River, hoping to follow it to Lisbon. However, the French are there ahead of him, and he has no option but to live off the land and try to survive. He joins a group of Portuguese guerrillas and spends two months with them, harassing the encamped French army, killing sentries and laying ambushes for scouting parties and supply animals. After two months of guerrilla fighting, Dodd hears artillery fire from about ten miles away. He can tell by the sound that it is neither a battle nor a siege. He knows that anyone exchanging artillery fire with the French is an ally of his, so he takes his friend Bernardino and sets out to see what is happening. They meet another Portuguese guerrilla, whose name they never learn, who leads them to the site of the firing. There he sees British soldiers on the other side of the Tagus firing rockets at the town of Santarém, and the French returning cannon fire to stop them. Dodd deduces that there must be something in the town that the British want to set on fire; furthermore, it must be something near the river. From this he can guess what the target must be: the French are trying to construct a pontoon bridge across the Tagus, and the British are firing the rockets to try to burn the pontoon boats, rope, timber, and paint that are warehoused by the river. Unable to dislodge the British rocketeers from their entrenchments on the far side of the river, the French gather up all the bridge-building supplies and move them farther up the river, to a position where the British can neither see them nor fire on them. Dodd determines to destroy the bridge material himself. He, Bernardino, and the unnamed guerrilla return to their band's headquarters, only to find that while they were gone the French had discovered and destroyed the whole band, hanging the men on trees and taking away the women and the food. The three have nothing to eat, so the unnamed guerrilla visits the French encampment that night, kills a sentry and steals a pack mule. They slaughter the mule and smoke the meat, giving them enough food in their packs for several weeks. Then they set out to find the new bridge-building headquarters. Before they find it, they are surprised by a French patrol; they run for cover, but Dodd's two friends fall and are captured. From the safety of the rocks, Dodd looks back to see his friends hanged. He resolutely goes on alone and finds the French encampment. He patiently hides in the rocks watching the business of the camp for several days. Finally, he goes in by night, kills two sentries, and spreads highly flammable grease and oil (kept in cauldrons by the French for tarring rope, greasing cordage, and waterproofing their boats) over the pontoons and timber and rope, and sets it all on fire. From his hideout in the rocks, he sees the whole encampment burn, and is pleased with his success; he never learns that orders had arrived only that day for the French to burn the encampment themselves since Masséna had ordered a retreat. Dodd avoids the retreating French army and happily rejoins his regiment, unacknowledged, unthanked and unconcerned about his months of demanding effort. Dodd does, however, get something that to him is more important; a new uniform, new boots, a shave, and his first ration of bread & salt in months. 

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Queens private detective John Shaft is contacted by his old friend Cal Asby, an insurance salesman and mortician, who tells him he's in trouble and asks him to come immediately. As soon as Shaft arrives, Asby is killed by a bomb planted inside of his house. Shaft is questioned by a suspicious police Captain Bollin, but is quickly released due to a lack of evidence. Asby's business partner Johnny Kelly owes mob boss Gus Mascola $250,000 in past gambling debts, money he had planned to take from his partner but had been moved and hidden before his death. Asby's house is ransacked before Shaft, Kelly, and Asby's sister Arna can investigate. When the perpetrator runs out, Kelly blocks Shaft from chasing him while pretending to help. Suspicious, Shaft tells Arna that he wants to inspect Asby and Kelly’s partnership papers, warning Kelly he intends to protect Arna. Bollin reveals to Shaft that Asby and Kelly were running a numbers racket with the insurance company and funeral parlor as profitable fronts but because they agreed to keep the scam clean, he looked the other way. Now that Asby is dead, however, Bollin fears that the mob will move in to take over their businesses. Although Bollin suspects that Shaft may be involved with one of the gangsters, he asks him to help, and Shaft coolly agrees. Shaft forces one of Kelly's numbers runners to reveal the location of the operation's headquarters. Upon arriving, he is seduced by Kelly's mistress Rita as revenge for her lover's mistreatment. While the two have sex, Kelly is threatened by Mascola, who demands not only to be paid but to be made an equal partner in the operation. Kelly is reluctant, telling the mobster that he is worried about Shaft’s interference on Arna’s behalf, but after Mascola promises to “take care” of Shaft, Kelly agrees to a 50-50 partnership. Shaft goes over the partnership papers with Arna and explains that although her brother was involved in gambling, he was reinvesting in the community, unlike the greedy Kelly. He also tells her that Asby had agreed to buy Kelly out, and that Kelly was going to use the money to pay his debts. Shaft believes that Kelly instead killed Asby to gain control of the businesses and the numbers racket, as well as to retain the $250,000 to pay Mascola. As they are talking, two of Mascola's hitmen arrive to murder Shaft but he outwits them and, after killing the assassins, takes Arna to hide at his apartment. Kelly offers Harlem racketeer Bumpy Jones a partnership in the Queens numbers game if he will help him break with Mascola. Knowing that the action will cause a major turf war, Bumpy agrees but demands a 60-40 split. Shaft goes to Mascola’s nightclub, which fronts for his gambling operations in the back rooms. Seeing Shaft at the club, Kelly, who is attempting to double-cross both Mascola and Bumpy, confronts Mascola, demanding to know why Shaft is still alive. Mascola reveals that Shaft killed the two men he sent, and when he declares that their deal is off, Kelly lies that Shaft works for Bumpy and is there to muscle in on his territory. Infuriated, Mascola has his men beat Shaft, then orders him to tell Bumpy to stay in Harlem. Shaft relays the message to Bumpy just as Mascola's men attempt a drive-by shooting, leading to Bumpy agreeing to join forces with the detective. Shaft overhears that Kelly has discovered the location of the $250,000 in a nearby cemetery, and with Rita's help manages to evade police and make his way there. Mascola and his men take a helicopter to the cemetery, and just as Kelly raises the coffin with the money, killing him and taking it. Shaft arrives and holds up the group, taking the money and Mascola hostage. They flee via speedboat as Mascola's men pursue in a helicopter, shooting and destroying the boat and inadvertently killing Mascola. Shaft escapes the explosion and hides the bag, clambering over the docks in a cat-and-mouse chase with Mascola's men before destroying the helicopter and killings its occupants. Police led by Bollin arrive and demand to know the location of the money. Shaft refuses, but implies he will be donating it to a child care clinic, as Asby had always intended. 

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In the story, Tom, Huck, and Jim travel to Africa in a futuristic hot air balloon, where they survive encounters with lions, robbers, and fleas to see some of the world's greatest wonders, including the Pyramids and the Sphinx. Like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Detective, the story is told using the first-person narrative voice of Huck Finn. It is a sequel, set in the time following the title story of the Tom Sawyer series. 

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